In Greek Mythology a Chimera is a creature who is part lion, part goat, part dragon. In today’s world it is a term applied to the vanishingly small number of people who have two or more sets of DNA. We’re talking hybrids here. And the nearest thing on screen to a living hybrid was Arthur (Josh O’Connor). He’s an Englishman abroad in 1980’s Tuscany wearing a crumpled linen suit, which gets progressively filthier as the film advances. He’s fresh out of jail and mourning the tragic loss of his lover Beniamina (played in a series of flashbacks by Yale Yara Vianello). An archaeologist by profession he has taken up illicit tomb raiding in the company of a band of Tombaroli, who prize his gift for discovering the location of ancient Etruscan graves using a divining rod. His home is a self constructed shack which leans against the walls of the medieval town where the rest of Beniamina’s family live. In particular her grandmother Flora played with great restraint by the wonderful Isabella Rossellini. Taking Arthur out of the picture just for a moment, this had to be about the most Italian of Italian films despite its pan European origins. Think of Pasolini eating a gelato, on a Lambretta, whilst listening to Pavarotti singing Puccini on his Marconi radio. Parts were pure Di Sica; parts avant- garde experimental cinema. But director Alice Rohrwacher isn’t interested in delivering a conventional narrative, she wants to explore grief, loss, love, memory and the corrosive impact of wealth inequality, in a baroque, self-reflective style, reminiscent of Fellini. To say the score – where music can encompass anything from Kraftwerk to MontiVerdi – is eclectic, is an understatement. Folksong and pageant are used as devices for exposition. And the visuals play with a host of different techniques. You will find amateurish focus pulls, shifting aspect ratios, use of different film stock and absurdly speeded up footage. Sometimes the camera simply turns the picture upside down or focuses on an aspect of nature struggling to survive in this hostile environment, or it disappears underground accompanied by a lone candle. The acting is varied too. One character breaks the fourth wall. In another sequence the Tombaroli communicate thro’ a sort of rhythmic guttural chanting. The locations are just as hard to pin down. One moment we’re on a polluted sea front backed by the skeletons of cranes and unspecified metal work. Then the scene shifts to the faded grandeur of the family home where Flora’s daughters vie for their inheritance as they try to browbeat her into a nursing home. Her companion/maid Italia (Carol Duarte) carries out her duties while hiding her two small children, displaying such contrasting levels of warmth and humanity thro song and dance, that the family becomes fearful and drive her out. She ends up squatting in a disused railway station with a group of similar destitutes where she continues to demonstrate her mercurial charm. It’s a trait which captivates Arthur and the two briefly become lovers. But the economic sterility of the time and the place forces him to re join the Tombaroli as they renew their grave robbing activities. Rohrwacher is not judgemental about this. Her films have always displayed a strong current of favour for the dispossessed and she allows a loose justification about taking stuff from the dead rich to provide for the living poor; its a kind of restorative justice, the redistribution of wealth across the generations. Even so once unearthed the olla, bucchero, and unguentaria must be fenced. It’s here that Arthur comes into contact with Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher); when the discovery of a spectacular statue of a Chimera offers his motley crew the chance of life-changing wealth. She’s a fixer with intimate connections to the art and antiquities market and collectors who are strangers to scruple. Her world comprises an hermetically sealed HQ accessible only by private lift and she schmoozes her clientele on a luxury yacht making polished presentations to tease out the highest prices. Valuable objects it seems are somehow predestined to return to the ownership of the super rich. Arthur comes across as a modern Orpheus, using his gift as much in pursuit of visions of his lost love as revealing the treasure which can tantalise as they bridge the past and present. His casual attitude to danger perhaps a clue to the comforting belief that death can reunite us with those we have loved and lost. Breaking the thread between the underworld and the over world turns what could have been an uplifting ending into a tragedy. I really liked this and thought it a major addition to the world of art house cinema.
Rating. 19/20
Viewed. 14/5/2024
Screen 2 (D8)
Phoenix Films 2024 