la chimera review
film by Alice Rohrwacher (2023)
As creatures of memory, we as a species live in a space occupied by the past and present, fluctuating between our objective and subjective realities simultaneously. Often, we imagine a romanticized past to escape the tribulations of the contemporary present. Alice Rohrwacher’s recent phantasmic oeuvre La Chimera envisions an antiquated protagonist who despondently drifts through his old haunts where the past gnaws at him with harrowing temptation.
Review by: Aaron Jones | Filed Under: Film Reviews
February 06, 2025
In 1980s Tuscany, Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a former British archaeologist, has traded in his academic respectability for his nocturnal necropolitan endeavors of robbing Etruscan tombs. Having just been released from prison for tomb raiding, he returns to familiar grounds where he first encounters Flora (Isabella Rossellini), an aging matriarch whose fading influence is mirrored through the dilapidated mansion’s eroding beauty where she still holds court with one remaining denizen, Italia (Carol Duarte). Italia, an aspiring singer who lacks talent but not heart, functions more as a maid than a pupil, however remaining unfazed by her exploited position. She conveys dazzling eccentricity and an esoteric vibe, infusing the film with her furtive idiosyncrasies that pierce with metastasizing charm and sincerity.
The family home is revealed to hold secrets, including Beniamina, Flora’s daughter and Arthur’s girlfriend, the one treasure that has eluded Arthur’s possession, living only in his dreams and memories, which we catch fragmented glimpses of alluring his desires and hopes to be reunited with, but whose whereabouts in reality remain a mystery.
Living in a makeshift, ramshackle hovel brimming with cultural relics, including himself, Arthur remains reticent from the turgid splendor associated with historical treasures, exposing his deep sentimentality for the past, rooted in a nostalgic admiration for subjective beauty. An appreciation of such beauty is shared equally by Italia, arriving only to be captivated by the hovel’s harmony with nature. Showing no discomfort with its impoverished appearance, she finds common ground with Arthur in their shared love of beauty, leading to the possible moral crossroads.
Returning, though somewhat reluctantly, to his motley crew of tomb-raiding (Tombaroli) harlequins and vagabonds representing something conjured from the minds of Fellini or Jodorowsky cavorting in their carnivalesque ensemble that stands recognizably as a dark cloud shrouding Arthur’s present seductively influencing his moral conflict. Rolling out its dynamically whimsical genre-bending flair, the film’s oscillating rhythms casually embark into magical realism through Arthur and his accursed possession of a sixth sense. This allows him to locate buried tombs and historical relics using a dowsing rod, where, with each dig, a feeling looms that somehow implies bridging a gap between Benjamina and himself – a gesture also subliminally personified by Flora.
After each dig, Arthur and his ensemble sell their score on the black market to Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher), a faceless, almost Oz-like puppet master who connects Arthur and his conspiring troupe to the pockets of the ruling class and represents the limit of their abilities. Juxtaposing the class divide and revealing capitalism’s reach is not limited to the contemporary world but is well associated with the ancient one. This provides the rich the means to exclusively horde historical wealth by enriching themselves while exploiting others.
Stricken with a skeletal gait evocative of Ichabod Crane or a wet cat still clamoring for its bearings, Arthur is affronted by the invasive din of the outside world’s clunky denizens and remnants of desperation and poverty. He remains on a psychological plane all his own while being revered amongst locals as a folk hero due to his abilities, imagined through a narrative that employs unconventional means exemplified by fourth-wall breaks. Poetic renditions by bard-like troubadours using oral storytelling serve as intermediaries in the film’s wildly transformative structure, which shimmers with hallmarks of classical fables. An emerging ambivalence exhibits fissures amongst Arthur and his accomplices, consumed by a ratified internal preoccupation that distances him from others. Even when his emotions synchronize with outside affections, they provide disservice because his self is lost without recourse, compelled by obsession and an ethereal call.
Rohrwacher has summoned a film lush with esoteric reality incorporating vivid iconography, enriched themes, and cinematic dialect to traverse its ambitious canvas with a synergizing array of translucent and fully realized tonal threads. Employing cultural and cinematic homage while interconnecting them peripherally to augment its mythologizing landscape further, stirring with the frenetic virtuosity uniquely the directors own. At times playful, it carries an experimental range that unpredictability interludes between its dramatic fiction and tonal shifts, compiling its majesty and charm of comedic misadventures – turned dramatic surrealism – infusing montages, vignettes, multiple aspect ratios, and musical styles that make La Chimera the gift that keeps on giving even amongst its darkest depths.
Throughout its habitually pivotal style, the film questions the masculine foundation on which the modern world is built. It counters pervasive hyper-masculinity, its role in cultural repression, and its self-destructive tendencies by surreptitiously threading a sustainable feminist web within its thematic landscape. It remarks on methods of living and ownership by passively reclaiming what nobody wanted for a sustainable future founded on community instead of individualism. By endorsing nurturement instead of destruction, the film suggests that a feminine influence may sustain deeper truths that we have denied ourselves through our oppressive global infrastructure.
We as a species have become severed from the cyclic order of the natural world; overcome by our desire for possession of beauty mastered by capitalism, our senses have become more entranced by our own creations over the creation itself. Subtly hinting at Arthur’s poetic adjacency to birds, the film explores metaphors of their oneness and our out-of-sync ecology as we have fallen out of harmony with nature. Arthur seems to be subliminally in tune with this harmony if you pay close enough attention to birds resembling some form of unspoken sentinels or kin who eagerly await his return and whose calls, though unacknowledged, are understood.
La Chimera feels like an amalgamation of two eras, an archaic dream of tragic longing that juxtaposes our historical roots with modern industry. The treasures of a romanticized past appear too pure for the corrupted gaze of the present, where history’s beauty is commoditized. Arthur stands as the embodiment of grief, burdened by an unshakable sense of loss. He is captivated by the past, drawn to it through emotion and the allure of romanticized temptation.
Death is his only sanctuary from his present emotional purgatory, where he wanders like a disembodied wraith, whose his soul is unable to find peace among the living. He resembles the caged bird inside the coveted bell he gifts to Italia, who inspires him with an inner strength he never knew he had, urging him to answer the call that has incessantly haunted him. A romanticized and tragic figure of our classical past that Rohrwacher has so splendidly revived to share with us.
Author
Reviewed by Aaron Jones. Based in California, he developed a passion for film from a young age and has since viewed over 10,000 films. His appreciation for the medium led him to film criticism, where he now writes for CinemaWaves, offering analysis of both contemporary releases and timeless classics. In addition to his work here, he has contributed to other publications as well. Feel free to follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
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