The Brooklyn Rail

The real and tangible impacts of myth and mirage concern the appropriately titled La Chimera (2023), which recently screened at the 61st New York Film Festival. The ethics of museum collecting and archaeological practices provide a territory rife for excavating the deeper ills of global power dynamics. Alice Rohrwacher's latest film digs into this ethical site with all the complex care required of the subject.

No Indiana Jones franchise, the film's serious tone is a refreshing shift away from the tomb-raiding action adventure genre. The film follows Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a British archaeologist living in Italy during the 1980s, who returns home after a stint in prison. He feels betrayed by his friends who left him behind during a night of plundering ancient Etruscan tombs, leaving him alone to get caught. What exactly the tone of La Chimera is becomes more difficult to define. It borrows elements from many story types—comedy, folklore, tragic romance, romantic comedy, action adventure, mystery, gothic, realism alongside magic realism, and even a touch of James Bond–esque international crime drama. The dynamism of the narrative is one of its greatest strengths, but the lack of focus is also one of its greatest weaknesses.

Soon enough, the band gets back together again to dig up more tombs using Arthur's sixth sense with dowsing rods. The dowsing rods plus the shots of birds taking off evoke the culture of the omen-concerned augurs of ancient Etruria, which creates a satisfyingly moody atmosphere for the film. When Arthur tunes into a tomb, the aspect ratio shifts and the edges of the screen appear tattered, like from an old-fashioned camera, complicating the sense of time in the film. La Chimera is at its most entertaining when playing into moments of whimsy and humor. We get to know Arthur's group of "tombaroli" (or tomb raiders) through a wild Epiphany (a Christian feast day) celebration involving costumes and partying, a giddily absurd and surreal scene.

Arthur mines the underworld for more than material wealth; he is emotionally haunted by a deceased girlfriend, Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello), whom he seems determined to find. Enhancing the ancient, mythic, folkloric qualities of the tale, the tombaroli claim Arthur does not rob for the usual reasons but because he truly seeks a door to the afterlife. The film plays with time, turning Arthur and the literal camera upside down into the underworld, and the tombaroli sing folk songs about Arthur as if to solidify him into Etruscan mythology.

Arthur's search for Beniamina becomes complicated by the entrance of Italia (Carol Duarte), an attractive young woman engaged in a game of mutual manipulation with Beniamina's mother (Isabella Rossellini), Flora, in order to provide for her children. Arthur and Italia concoct a tender chemistry that propels the narrative, but Arthur's obsession with Beniamina prevents the story from moving forward and is not as emotionally compelling as watching the sparks fly with Italia. While the search for a door to the afterlife and his obsession with Beniamina do bring the story full circle, the storyline could have been tighter. Not having actually met Beniamina when she was alive makes it difficult for an audience to fully empathize with Arthur's motivations.

In some ways, Italia represents a typical female role in cinema: the moral pillar who encourages her man not to stray from a righteous path. Still, she gets some of the best lines in the film, warning the tombaroli that the grave goods are “not meant for human eyes.” What saves Italia from female savior is her dynamism. She's no narc, and, indeed, she's done her share of playing the system to her advantage. She eventually moves her children into an abandoned train station that is technically public property and therefore “belongs to everyone and no one.” She takes in other local homeless children and one of the women, Fabiana (Ramona Fiorini), who used to run with the tombaroli. In the station, she creates a matriarchal world, like the Etruscan society, as explained earlier in the film. This development forms one of many examples of a fascinating chess game of gender roles, dangerous blondes versus persevering brunettes, manipulative matriarchs, men and women deploying drag in La Chimera.

Intrigue suffuses La Chimera with the introduction of Spartaco, the buyer for the stolen goods. The tombaroli “meet” Spartaco at a veterinarian office where they send artifacts up to Spartaco through a sort of dumbwaiter system that evokes James Bond–like innovations. The tombaroli's entanglement with Spartaco successfully reveals the international web of black market antiquities adding suspense without sensationalizing the story Da Vinci Code–style.

While beautifully shot, Rohrwacher resists the cliched Tuscan vistas that appeal to tourists. The ancient necropolis haunts the shores around an ugly factory, the buildings barely stand in disrepair, Arthur lives in a hovel built against the hillside. Meanwhile, Rohrwacher paints a comprehensive picture of international relations surrounding archaeology largely within the confines of one rural village. The film critiques the relationship between capitalism and cultural heritage through a narrative structure based on the different stories of how people are mooching off each other. Italia tricks Flora, but Flora’s daughters themselves don’t really take care of her—they flock around her like a chorus of pecking birds. Arthur and his companions pickpocket the dead, and others, like Spartaco, make money off of their travails. And through all of this, a mother and her children have nowhere to go but an abandoned train station, and when a tomb opens, we watch thousands of years of history in the form of wall paintings literally disintegrate before our eyes because of their contact with air. To Rohrwacher's credit, La Chimera has no interest in making its audience feel better about these facts.