Like its mysterious and mythic title, La Chimera is itself a bit of an illusion. The film’s surface-level plot — about a group of shady tomb-raiding archeologists, led by Arthur (The Crown and God’s Own Country actor Josh O’Connor)– reveals a deeper, poetic tale about nature, death and the impact of history on our lives.
It is cinema as excavation, a search for the hidden wonder in the everyday.
Isabella Rossellini and Rohrwacher’s actress sister Alba, a frequent collaborator, co-star.
The story of the region where I grew up has always been linked to these findings. Stories that go like, “that guy found this incredible vase; he sold it to another guy, who sold it to the Louvre. This other guy found a gold necklace.” Everyone spoke about these incredible discoveries that were always made at night, all clearly illegal. So a lot of stories had accumulated in my ears on this theme.
But I don’t believe this film would have been born if I hadn’t written it during the lockdown, during COVID, when death became a very strong presence. And so the thought of how we relate to death, how we relate to the afterlife, in different epochs, somehow created need to tell a story that started with these thieves who steal burial decorations and also steal an idea of death. They steal something that was not built for men.
Where did you shoot it?
We shot it mainly in Tarquinia, but also in Blera, San Lorenzo, in many places in the Viterbese region. We didn’t shoot inside a real necropolis because it would have felt terrible to shoot there. We shot in caves that we later transformed into tombs. The treasure hunt is one part of the film and, like all searches for treasure, it’s also quite adventurous. The film is mainly about a man and his Chimera, his illusion. The chimera is something that we try to grasp, to freeze in image, but it mutates constantly, and we never manage to reach it.
On the one hand, you can say they are tomb raiders, they are people who steal property that belongs to the state. But this illegal part, this in-the-shadows part, interested me less than the moment when a man feels entitled to enter a sacred space, because he no longer has faith, and destroys it. He feels he has that right because he feels different and entitled. He can enter a space that was created not for the eyes of men, and take it to the sunlight. Maybe it’s a bit complicated as a topic. Then I tried to show all this in the stupidest, funniest, most ironic way possible, but it is a bit of a heavy theme.
Casting English actor Josh O’Connor as the head of tomb raiders?
Because we need the point of view of the foreigner, we need to do everything we can to make our point of view a foreign one. This is something important that concerns our whole society. Being able to look with the eyes of foreigner is maybe the best way to see ourselves. It was a story so linked to my region, to my territory, that having a “foreign” guide allowed me to have another way to look at things and show them in a different way.
Collaborating with your sister, Alba Rohrwacher?
You directed episodes of HBO series My Brilliant Friend and short film Le Pupille, which was Oscar nominated?
They are two very particular projects, because for My Brilliant Friend, [series creator] Saverio Costanzo took me under his wing, and I was protected by exceptional writing, by cast that had already been chosen, by incredible crew. I had the joy of experiencing pure film directing, which I had never done before. I’d always had the responsibility not only for the directing, but also for the script, the cast, everything. It was really nice to be able to just be the surgeon, or the chef, who finds the ingredients already there and then cooks. This was very nice but it was a special situation where I was helped, I was not alone.
It was a similar case for Le Pupille, a project that already existed at Disney. Alfonso Cuarón really wanted to make this short, so he protected it. I wasn’t all on my own facing some huge production task. I must say though, in both these situations, where I admit I wasn’t alone at the helm, I was amazed by the extreme freedom I had. In my career, I’ve said “no” many times. I am often offered to direct a film from someone else’s screenplay. But with the exception of My Brilliant Friend, which is also a novel that goes way back, I’ve never been able to confront the task of directing someone else’s screenwriting.
It’s strange because I think that when you choose to do this work, you do it mainly for an inner need, for a means of expression, for a chance to speak through images. So the greatest expectation is always the one that comes from within you, from your own need. I feel the expectations of others, and they worry me. I know that once I’m daring, I’m always risking failure, and every time I finish a film, I’m aware that I’m on a razor’s edge, that it could be a disaster, but it could also be beautiful.
But the first person I’m always afraid to disappoint is the person who lives inside me, the little girl inside me. And then it’s clear that life is made of ups, downs, parties, depressions and all this is part of Arabesque, part of game that cannot please everyone.
Artificial intelligence is talk of the industry now?
I am more “organic dumb” than “artificially intelligent,” so it’s difficult for me to have a say on this topic. I know I am ignorant. I know I don’t know exactly what is happening in the meanders of science, and I know that it clearly concerns our lives. Yet I believe there are things that cannot be replaced, such as having to digest food that was not already processed, such as having to confront oneself with raw material. What worries me is how we seem to be heading toward extreme refinement of, to use the food metaphor, an extreme refinement of images, of the images that nourish us. But in reality, the raw material from which these images are refined [the data] is dead matter, it’s not living matter, and I believe that deep down a human being can feel it, can taste it. If you taste real food, you can feel it. Inside a living story, you feel the difference. If I eat images that are made of dead material, I see it. If they are images with mistakes but made out of living material, I can feel it. So maybe what we have left is to create things that maybe are not perfect, maybe not perfectly sophisticated, but that are alive, that have mistakes; machines can’t make mistakes.
Am I happy? Happiness is a chimera that you never reach. More than happiness, I feel peaceful, because this was a long trip and I feel serene about the idea of finality. Presenting a film i about reaching the end of long journey, so you arrive tired, but you really feel like arriving. The desire to finally show the film is strong, and alongside that, there is the fear of revealing your film.
