Let's Discuss La Chimera

Best movie of the year so far? Best movie of the year so far.

A few of us have started this running bit that I’m only allowed one exclamation point a week. I’m not usually one to text with exclamations as my forte is usually run-on sentences full of various thoughts that connect together by only the slightest of margins, but every so often I like to exclaim and be excited. Thus, it gives me all the pleasure in the world to state (loudly) that La Chimera is my exclamation point movie of the year … so far.

There it is. That’s the one I get this week.

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As a self-described individual who sees way too many movies, I feel like I often find myself watching the same kinds of things over and over again. The Fall Guy is a Marvel-esque, self-knowing, fun-but-not-very-good action rip-off. The Idea of You is Nancy Meyers without any of the charm or jokes. And so on. And so on.

I much prefer a movie that doesn’t totally work but has something I’ve never seen before (like I Saw the TV Glow) to a well-oiled machine that in (Dua Lipa parlance) gives us nothing. When something’s both brand new AND really damn good, that’s when my brain really turns on.

I saw La Chimera back on April 1st and it’s stuck with me ever since. I have trouble describing it because it changes genres at a moment’s notice but I guess it’s kind of a dramedy of sorts in an elevated mythical yarn of a universe. It’s both grounded and also features honest-to-god magic. It’s supposedly about Italy in the 1980s, and it is, I guess, but it’s also an entirely new plane of existence.

The person who keeps everything together is Josh O’Connor who’s having a hell of a year between this, Challengers and multiple group chats I’m in. With his hangdog demeanor and constantly dirty suits, O’Connor’s British archaeologist character Arthur is simultaneously a graverobber (part of the tomboroli gang), art collector and a romantic searching for his lost love. He keeps the train on the tracks despite the script constantly throwing in side-plots and various missions that nearly derail his work.

“La Chimera’s Arthur is one of the most depressed men ever to grace the screen,” Rachel Handler wrote for Vulture. “He spends most of the film mournfully trudging around fantasizing about his missing girlfriend, Beniamina, while emitting such a dark scent that, in an early scene, a traveling salesman who stumbles past him on a train pauses to insult him for a while. ‘Jeez, it really stinks in here,’ he says, pointing at Arthur. ‘This man doesn’t like water. Such a charming man, but he stinks!’”

“I see Arthur, who is handsome and stoic and shy and thoughtful, and think about the grieving men of films past,” Fran Hoepner wrote for Bright Wall/Dark Room. “I think of Leonardo DiCaprio’s squinting, weepy Dominick Cobb in Inception (what, like you forgot he’s named Dominick Cobb?), I think of Casey Affleck’s comatose Lee in Manchester by the Sea. I think of the weight of the world resting on one man who once had something and now doesn’t. Loss is admitting to a type of possession. Or worse: loss is to admit a lack of possession in the first place.”

“The grave robber in the dirty linen suit will NOT provide for you,” Jay wrote on Letterboxd.

Many actors wouldn’t be able to do much with such an understated script and minimal dialogue, but O’Connor’s bewitching face and exhausted eyes tell you the entire story. I’m not sure who else could’ve made this work.

Alice Rohrwacher is one to keep an eye on as well, as the Italian director copies styles and plot devices you’ve seen plenty of times before and meshes them together to create something completely new. I was pretty mixed on Happy as Lazzaro, her previous feature film, but now it feels like a test run for what she’s doing here.

The movie is daring enough to take detour after detour from the above dance scene to an extended Greek chorus of sorts to seemingly random sped-up action that keeps the audience guessing about what’s to come. There’s a real feeling of spontaneity, which also results in something a bit more truthful. Also, Isabella Rossellini is in this movie somehow. There’s no one better.

Things are rarely as cut and dry with back-and-forth witticisms as modern movies like to make it seem. Not that I’m against an Ocean’s 11 now and again, but I like the feeling that literally anything can happen in the subsequent scene.

Perhaps my favorite sequence occurs during one of the tomb-raiding scenes when things go awry. Arthur and company open a grave they had never thought to look at before, and you can see the beauty and the preservation immediately zap away from the art underneath their feet.

The movie never judges its characters but does show you the repercussions of their actions time and time again. Arthur isn’t a good guy. He’s not a bad guy either. He’s just some lovelorn idiot trying to figure things out.

The movie is bookended by these romantic dreams(?), memories(?), incidents(?) that put the rest of the story in stark contrast. The movie doesn’t care about what’s real or not. It just cares about the feeling of what matters. It’s tough to explain, which is why it’s so damn good.

It’s streaming for $5.99 right now, which is a hell of a deal for the best movie I’ve seen in a while. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back, but I can’t imagine you not liking it and also I have no money so this is not legally binding at all.