Plot is for Boomers, & other stories.
So — you’re not crazy, at least not in this regard.
I don’t like to call these things film reviews, per se, because I prefer to go in as raw as possible. I evade background research and what can be multiple trailers (an art-form). Just experience the picture in my most open and most vulnerable state, with as few expectations as possible. That’s before I see the thing. Afterwards I’m avoiding the critics for as long as I possibly can, even though I’m chomping at the bit for context, references. My tumble down somebody’s Wonderland, in this case Alice Rohrwacher’s, is even more delicious if I have next to zero sensory experience of their worldview.
Maybe I cheated a little bit this time. As I tumble towards my (ahem) 40s, I’ve started to accept certain things about myself — that even auteur cinema represents a comfort zone not just for my tastes but also my emotions. I need little pockets of predictability: handles to latch onto before the picture is air-borne, in order to recognise that I’m witnessing a classic. In this sense La Chimera is like a person gathering the steps to parry a hang-glider into the sky, who doesn’t attempt lift-off at any of the moments you’d expect. If this were a tweet I would call the whole thing a big fat second act. The type of art rebels mean when they imply, at smart-casual parties, that plot is for boomers.
I’m trying to keep myself jargon-free, since this was (after all) supposed to be a Slack message. I started to panic after an hour, because I still didn’t know what this movie was supposed to be or what exactly it was trying to say. Arthur (Josh O’ Connor) returns to a very small Italian town and appears to have some command of the language. His story only begins to twinkle into being when an old friend forces him inside a comically small car. Arthur constantly looks out of place like this. When he angrily exits said small car, to stomp up and down a village that also is too small for him. When he trudges up a green hill that somehow accommodates his weariness, and into a shack that signals how much he has lost whilst in prison. When he sips tea at the family home of his lover, who is ‘missing’, and basks in the adoration of her mother — politely turning down meals because he would rather have cigarettes. Arthur’s exhausted, big-ass body, his modest Italian, and his sparkly temper only make material sense when he’s robbing ancient graves.
Okay, I’m thinking to myself. Gotcha ... but not … quite.
If a movie makes me think about it several days later, I have to suspect it’s attempted something profound — something I’ll only understand later in life when it’s impossible to rent, or after (as I suggested) six more viewings. I felt I’d watched something distinctly Italian when I was done with La Chimera, had been handed kaleidoscopic access to the culture in a way I imagine is hard to describe in words. Obviously I need you to verify certain presumptions. Was it just me or was everybody in every conversation, whether it was about tea, old debts, the just value of unearthed artefacts, the good old days, or the nature of happiness, taking the piss? Is it just me now, or would a large group of actual Italians on an adventure, like a hike, an all-night bender, or a grave-robbing, sound like everybody taking the piss? There is something to be said for dialogue that chases itself around in such giddy circles, and makes it hard for me (I don’t know about you) to spot the incidence of deliberate genius.
When you first brought up this movie, perhaps there was a splendour in your tone, I thought it was some kind of fantasy — not that its characters would journey down the literal underworld. Instead of spotting the unicorn outright amongst the trees, it’s scattered around the air of this very strange set-piece. We dig or wade or float through it, and then we rub a pair of fingers together and sense the dust is there. La Chimera never lands its jokes on the nose, throws love and affection around as though these things are fleeting, and yet: it still seems to mean every last word it utters, every last gesture it makes.
It reminds me of that Italian film I told you about once. The only picture my old man ever watched, where someone in their 50s thereabouts returns to their home town, says yes to every drink in sight, and mostly apologises to all the lovers they deserted. Is this quintessentially Italian movie (La Chimera, I mean) also ‘The Odyssey’ if Odysseus came home with a habit he failed to shake on his travels?
It also reminds me of this time I slept over at a house party, yearrrs ago — right at the death of it a childhood friend appeared and mixed himself a meal out of leftovers he didn’t even bother to microwave. It was almost 5am and this dude was righteously blitzed. He talked some shit about the lack of groceries in the fridge, and a bunch of us talked some shit back about the hour. I remember thinking, Wow: this fucking night is never actually going to end, is it?
La Chimera did, eventually, but not because it owed anybody closure. I respect the hell out of that, even if I don’t fully understand it now.
