“Look,” says Alice Rohrwacher in the middle of our conversation, pointing to the moon, already visible in the blue sky. “You may think the moon is flat just because only one side is visible at all times. But the moon also has another side, even if we never see it.”
This somewhat cryptic wisdom is exemplary of Rohrwacher’s way of filmmaking. In her work, the visible and invisible are intimately intertwined.
Politics and mysticism
The Italian director makes political stories that are often based on real events: they are based Lazzaro Felice to a newspaper article about Italian farmers forced to work as sharecroppers. And she based her latest film on the existence of tombaroligangs of Italian robbers who steal (in this case Etruscan) funerary treasures to resell them on the black market.
Her films are therefore political stories. At the same time they have a mystical layer. In Lazzaro Felice turns out the main character can time travel; in La chimera the main character is connected to the realm of the dead, allowing him to effortlessly find the underground tombs with the most beautiful treasures.
Just as is the case with the moon, the two aforementioned layers are not two reverse sides of the film, but together form a spherical shape in which both sides – invisible and visible – continuously merge into each other.
The imaginative elements do not contradict the political theme, but appear to be a representation of it. Lazzaro Felice depicts a feudal system in modern times and captures the extra-temporal feeling it creates by having the main character travel to the future.
Shaking awake from the spell
Rohrwacher assigns political power to its mystical elements. “If we were more aware of the network that connects everything, perhaps we would have more respect for other people, for the world, for nature. Cinema can help us develop this sensitivity to the invisible aspect of life.”
Rohrwacher’s idiosyncratic approach to magical realism makes her an interesting figure in European cinema. At the age of 42, she is still relatively at the beginning of her career as a filmmaker and she already has four feature films to her name, all with a unique signature. Rarely do you find a filmmaker who makes poetic, emotional cinema with such political impetus.
She does not use myths and fairy tales to enchant us, but to involve us in the story. Take in the unstoppable energy of La chimera. There are changes in aspect ratio, parts of the story are told in songs and characters sometimes address the viewer directly by talking to the camera.
These are wonderful moments of narrative ambition, but they also have a political purpose. “I wanted the film not just to be a passive story, to not just be a story to be consumed, but to be a film in which the audience is forced to participate, to see the story from many points of view .”
Every time the viewer is about to lose themselves in the film and forget themselves in the process, a character tells us that this is a story being told. In this way, Rohrwacher wakes up the viewer again and again.
What can we see?
There is another reason why Rohrwacher’s moon analogy is such a good one for understanding her work. In essence it goes La chimera namely about what we cannot or are not allowed to see. Main character Arthur (Josh O’Connor) sees the realm of the dead (with his eyes closed) and uses his gift to invade tombs with a gang of grave robbers, in which treasures for the afterlife are hidden. These treasures were not made for mortal eyes, but are now being pushed into the art world.
Rohrwacher’s story about stealing is not about ownership – she does not argue, as the Italian police say in her film, that the treasures belong to the empire – but about visibility. Just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just because something exists doesn’t mean we have to see it.
La chimera is a film about excavations that reveals its storylines layer by layer, like an archaeologist uncovering a treasure. But some things are best left hidden, Rohrwacher seems to want to say with her film. We don’t need to see the dark side of the moon to know it exists.
The common thread in La chimera
La chimera is about Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who has just been released from prison. He is plagued by visions of his deceased girlfriend with a red thread in her hand. Alice Rohrwacher, who studied literature and philosophy at the University of Turin before turning to filmmaking, refers here to the mythical figure Ariadne. She gave the hero Theseus a thread, which is often depicted as red in interpretations of the myth, so that he could escape from the labyrinth with the Minotaur. His deceased girlfriend is also the common thread in the story, because while Arthur’s gang members break open graves to look for treasure, Arthur searches for a portal that can take him to the afterlife to be together with his loved one.
La chimera
Direction Alice Rohrwacher
Of Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher
Can be seen in Cinecenter, Eye, Filmhallen, Het Ketelhuis, Rialto De Pijp, Studio/K
Also from this week:
A profession seriously: after three films about doctors, Thomas Lilti made a film about teachers and shows how difficult being a teacher is.
The Wasteland: with a surprising form and a soundtrack by Blaudzun, this documentary investigates how TS Eliot’s world-famous poem resonates in the present.
Milk: After her child is stillborn, Robin searches for a way to make the breast milk that does come useful in Stefanie Kolk’s compelling feature debut.
Conann: a hallucinatory descent into the underbelly of barbarism, in which Conann is a woman and is played by six cruel specimens.
Immaculate: the horror film fits in with how Sydney Sweeney, often with a quip, challenges autonomy over one’s own body, in a world in which women’s bodies are still often defined by others.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: the idea of letting go of the old and creating more space for the new never arises. The franchise is simply building a bigger container to hold the ghosts of the past.
Tags: chimera political mystical story Italian gang robbers awakens viewer
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