When Grave Robbing Gets Philosophical

The grubby cream suit serves as his protective armor which he uses to defend himself against everything outside. Or maybe more like a shroud. Who can tell. The color scheme in La Chimera creates an uncomfortable effect because it alternates between the bright Tuscan sunlight and the hidden underground areas where things build value through their forgotten state. Five words: this film commits so hard. Rohrwacher and Louvart shoot Arthur's journey through 1980s Italy with this texture you could scrape your fingernails against, switching between 35mm and 16mm stocks like they're playing some game with time itself, which I suppose they are, considering Arthur spends half the film trying to crawl backwards through it to find his dead girlfriend Beniamina.

Look at the first tomb sequence. Arthur uses his divining rod to detect the dead while the camera spins upside down when he touches the spirits. You observe him and his unorganized tombaroli group as they open ancient locks which makes you consider how we transform historical events into commercial products. Actually, wait. That's too neat. What gets me is the red dress. Beniamina appears with this knitted object in his visions while a single thread extends from it to penetrate into the ground and Arthur continues to grasp the thread as if he believes strong enough pulling will bring her back from Etruscan disappearance.

The entire story becomes evident through the selection of costumes. Everyone else gets period-appropriate eighties fashion but Arthur walks around in that disintegrating linen like some Victorian ghost who took a wrong turn at the underworld, and Isabella Rossellini's Flora sits in her crumbling villa wearing black everything except these turquoise socks Arthur gives her which feel like the only spot of genuine color in her entire existence. Meanwhile Italia dances around in this rainbow dress that practically vibrates off the screen.

Something about watching O'Connor lose weight for this role, living in a camper van, washing himself in Lake Bolsena. Method actors believe that experiencing pain leads to genuine acting but Arthur's natural exhaustion makes this technique suitable for him. Dug up. The fast-paced camera work in chase scenes by Rohrwacher creates a silent comedy effect which seems to contradict the mythological elements of the story yet works surprisingly well.

"Those things aren't made for human eyes but those of souls," Italia says about the artifacts. This lands different when you realize the whole film refuses to let you just look at anything straight on. The camera shows us angled views which reveal how the past continues to appear through multiple layers of exposed film.

The tombaroli themselves. They're not noble thieves or romantic rogues, just guys trying to make rent by selling off pieces of eternity to some shady dealer named Spartaco who works out of a veterinary clinic. Capitalism operates as a form of grave robbery yet people seem to survive by creating their own paths through the destroyed remains of previous systems. The camera shows an unbroken tomb for a brief moment before the characters destroy it while we see the perfect Etruscan chamber which has remained hidden for thousands of years until it disappears into nothingness. The experience made me doubt the purpose of La Chimera because it displays these short moments through illumination before they disappear.

I keep circling back to the color grading. Winter landscapes show themselves as frozen territories which reach past cold temperatures to create spiritual voids until summer arrives with its warm sunlight that makes the feeling of being out of place more intense. Flora's mansion peeling apart matches Arthur's suit deteriorating which matches the way every sacred thing in this film gets stripped for parts.

Actually the ending just. Stops. Which feels right.