Man must start doing what he can, so at some point his desire will flow into what he dreams of and then the sea of imagination, power, magic will be ready to overwhelm everything. Besides, everything we feel is a chimera in the great dream of life.
In the film “The Chimera” by Alice Rohrbacher, we are transported to the Italian countryside of the 1980s, specifically to Tarquinia, the ancient city of the province of Viterbo, a city known for its Etruscan heritage and ancient tombs. At the center of the narrative is Arthur, a young Englishman whose presence is shrouded in mystery. Having just been released from prison, archaeologist Arthur continues to search for his lost love Benjamin. It is implied that he may have followed his beloved Benjamina to this place, a woman who now exists only in memory, having departed this vain world. However, her mother, Flora, an opera singer, clings to the hope of her return, creating a haunting atmosphere of loss and nostalgia.
Arthur’s quest is a hunt for a chimera and visions that offer glimpses into the hidden past. Along with a group of local tombaroli, gravediggers, Arthur begins excavations to unearth ancient treasures buried with the dead, seeking to understand and perhaps recover what has been lost to time. While his companions are motivated by profit, Arthur’s pursuits are driven by a deeper longing for meaning and connection, symbolized by his relentless search for Benjamin and the truths hidden in the labyrinthine corridors of the past.
The film delves into themes of memory, loss and the passage of time, paralleling archaeological dig sites with the excavation of personal stories. Arthur’s journey becomes a metaphorical exploration of the human condition as he navigates the complex layers of existence, guided by an unimaginable thread similar to that of Ariadne in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Through his encounters with the liminal spaces between life and death, he wrestles with questions of identity and purpose, seeking resolution within the fragmented remnants of the past.
– We wanted to make money, it sounds like in the movie.
-But he was looking for a passage to the Herefollowing.
Alice Rohrbacher’s direction using different film formats (16mm and 35mm) to render the dreamlike, the fantastical and the realistic overlays her “Chimera” with a sense of poetic realism, capturing the rugged beauty of the Italian landscape while enriching the storytelling with an ethereal quality that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. The visual language of the film is completed where the neorealist immediacy meets the dreamlike depth. Characterized by haunting imagery and dream sequences, the film reflects Arthur’s inner turmoil and search for transcendence in a world characterized by transience and decay.
The film stars Josh O’Connor, who plays the dehydrated Arthur with a lean, resigned anguish and broken tenacity, and Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato.
Director Alice Rohrbacher (awarded at Cannes – Grand Jury Prize for “Miracles” in 2014 and Screenplay Award for “Happy Lazarus”) writes “Where I grew up (Fiesole, Tuscany) it was common to hear stories of secret discoveries, secret excavations and mysterious adventures” and continues “The closeness between the sacred and the profane, death and life, which characterized my growing up years, has always fascinated me and helped me to have a perception in the way I see things. That is why I finally decided to make a film that tells this multi-layered story, this relationship between two worlds, the last part of a triptych regarding a local area whose attention is focused on a central question: what to do with her past? As some grave diggers say, in our region it is the dead who give life.”
Central to the film’s thematic mosaic is the motif of the chimera – an emblem of the fleeting nature of truth and the ephemeral quality of memory. As Arthur wrestles with his own inner demons and external challenges, he confronts the chimerical nature of his own existence, oscillating between past and present, longing and acceptance. Ultimately, The Chimera is a meditation on the human condition, an exploration of the ways in which we navigate the complexities of our own history in search of meaning and redemption.
In life every smile is an illusion and every tear a reality. Somewhere in between resides an eternal illusion, a perpetual chimera with slivers of earthy truth, which we are called to live with courage, boldness and imagination. The more we cower, the more the unbearable reality suffocates our life.
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