Reviews - La Chimera
La Chimera
Reviewed By Roger Gook
Rarely do we see a film which sets out its wares so clearly, if cryptically, in the first scene. This was La Chimera shown by the Keswick Film Club last Sunday, the latest film by director Alice Rohrwacher. The film opens with the main character, Arthur, being awoken on a train by the guard. The guard apologises and tells him that he'll never know the ending of that dream, but we soon realise he does. The other passengers ask why his ticket is so strange, but we will see this is his ticket on his journey to death. They then complain that he smells – the impending stench of death. He makes a clumsy compliment about their noses and we know we are in the world of Etruscan art. Welcome to the heavy symbolism of La Chimera – but you have to work for it and much of it makes sense only with hindsight.
This tale of mortality and the journey of Arthur to find his dead love Benjimina is rich with images and symbols of death and the afterlife. Next to these are the contrasting images of life – carnivals, fairs and dancing that Aurthur can never quite be part of. Even loving shots of a boat engine show life throbbing and pulsing in all its power.
However Arthur and his friends, a rag-tag bunch who raid Etruscan tombs, have different motives. They are in it for the money and are shown as a pack of venal jackals, whilst Arthur is seeking the underworld and his dead love. He has the gift – the chimera – of being able to find the underground chambers, so they make a good, if fractious, team.
Arthur is emotionally dead and we know he will find his way to Benjimina, so the film is difficult to engage with and seems without passion and curiously distant. This feeling is enhanced by the photography – flat, dead and without any light – no sign of the Tuscan sun here! Some of the symbolism is heavy-handed as when the camera inverts to give a sense of underground. There are some strange jarring shots such as a Keystone Cops type chase and the changing screen format. You have to ask what this is about and the answer seems to be that the director does it because she can.
The end works well and seems inevitable. Arthur lives in a shack which is barely attached to the outside of the town walls, so when the men come to dismantle it we feel the end is near. Trapped underground in a grave, Arthur sees the red thread of life hanging and leading to the daylight, but it snaps and so Arthur is reunited with his dead love, Benjimina.
This tale of mortality and the journey of Arthur to find his dead love Benjimina is rich with images and symbols of death and the afterlife. Next to these are the contrasting images of life – carnivals, fairs and dancing that Aurthur can never quite be part of. Even loving shots of a boat engine show life throbbing and pulsing in all its power.
However Arthur and his friends, a rag-tag bunch who raid Etruscan tombs, have different motives. They are in it for the money and are shown as a pack of venal jackals, whilst Arthur is seeking the underworld and his dead love. He has the gift – the chimera – of being able to find the underground chambers, so they make a good, if fractious, team.
Arthur is emotionally dead and we know he will find his way to Benjimina, so the film is difficult to engage with and seems without passion and curiously distant. This feeling is enhanced by the photography – flat, dead and without any light – no sign of the Tuscan sun here! Some of the symbolism is heavy-handed as when the camera inverts to give a sense of underground. There are some strange jarring shots such as a Keystone Cops type chase and the changing screen format. You have to ask what this is about and the answer seems to be that the director does it because she can.
The end works well and seems inevitable. Arthur lives in a shack which is barely attached to the outside of the town walls, so when the men come to dismantle it we feel the end is near. Trapped underground in a grave, Arthur sees the red thread of life hanging and leading to the daylight, but it snaps and so Arthur is reunited with his dead love, Benjimina.
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