“It is of inestimable value, but that’s what we’re here for: to estimate the inestimable.” The price of the Etruscan past in ‘La chimera’.
Dionysus Cup by Exekias (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Alice Rohrwacher’s latest film La chimera (2024) is a visual delight for students of the ancient world, and a rare homage to the Etruscan civilisation on the big screen set to the music of Franco Battiato and Kraftwerk. Even the advertising is striking. One poster for the film adopts the style of a Tarot card: the main character hangs upside down by a single foot, while the faces of his companions crowding around him imitate Etruscan profiles depicted on the wall paintings of tombs. It’s not often that archaeology features in popular media, let alone the archaeology of the Etruscans, so here I want to share an archaeologist’s perspective on the film. Rohrwacher, who herself studied Classics at university and grew up in the shadows of Etruscan necropoli, gives special attention to real-life artefacts and archaeological sites. Identifying these is rewarding for the archaeologically-inclined viewer, but the film’s real merit lies in its exploration of the moral issues surrounding the looting of antiquities and our relationship with the past.
The film follows Arthur, heavily implied to be a former archaeologist from England, as he (initially begrudgingly) reunites with his merry band of tombaroli mates following a stint in prison. His crime? Illegally excavating and selling antiquities from Etruscan tombs. The setting is Italy in the heady 1980s when tomb looting was at its most rampant. The crew drive up and down the country looting tombs, from Volterra to the Banditaccia. Rohrwacher makes full use of the rich Etruscan landscape still visible today. The red thread running through the whole film is Arthur’s search for his lost love Beniamina, twinned with his obsession with artefacts and the past. Both of these are the titular chimere.
Arthur and his crew live in a Tuscan comune called Riparbella. Although a foreigner, Arthur appears to be accepted into this small, if not impoverished, community. He knows local slang, but most importantly, shares with his Italian comrades a love for the art of tomb looting. Critics have called La chimera an exercise in magic realism, but it is in this depiction of the poverty of 1980s rural Italy that Rohrwacher’s true realism shows. With nothing to do and no job prospects, Arthur’s friends and many others like them have turned to illicitly excavating the Etruscan tombs on their doorsteps and selling their plunder to the shadowy dealer Spartaco. Yet what is illegal and morally dubious activity is in the film presented to be a community activity which forges friendships and brings financial respite to the group.
The archaeological easter-eggs are worth diving deeper into. In a raucous scene on the beach, the crew spot a toilet lying on its side amongst the rubbish which has washed up from the sea. “Cratere di Eufronio!” calls out one of the band cheerily, if not sarcastically. It is a joke only someone who is familiar with the material culture of the ancient Mediterranean would appreciate. The crew, who at first glance appear as uneducated, poor, and unable to appreciate their own heritage, are fully in on the joke.
Red figure krater by Euphronios (National Museum Cerite, Cerveteri, Italy, photo: Sailko, CC BY 3.0)
In an enchanting series of scenes we see the crew combing over their loot; we are drawn into their camaraderie as one of them lifts the Dionysus kylix (filled with real wine!) to his lips. The sweeping eyes on the side meet the audience’s gaze. We never see the tondo of the cup with the scene of Dionysus reclining on the ship, entertained by his Etruscan pirates-turned-dolphins; the film challenges us to recognise one of the most iconic artefacts from the ancient Mediterranean, itself discovered at Vulci.
Side view of Dionysus Cup by Exekias
(Marcus Cyron, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
In another scene the crew appear to be inventorying their haul, exactly as you might expect after a day of excavation. Arthur carefully draws the section of a bucchero cup by lamplight in the farmhouse they have transformed into their ‘post-excavation’ headquarters. Pasta appears: the work of the indefatigable Fabiana, the sole woman in the crew. They all tuck in and we understand: this business of digging up antiquities is work.
As the film progresses, the lines between tombarolo and archaeologist become increasingly blurred. Arthur has a talent for finding tombs which manifests itself as half skill, half physical affliction: he uses a divining rod to lead him to an area, then experiences visions and collapses right on top of the spot where he and his crew should begin digging. For real life tombaroli, it is a relationship with the land, an ability to detect changes in the topography where they have often been born and raised, generally unlike professional archaeologists, which have made them so successful. [1]
The crew discover an untouched tomb, a rarity in Etruscan tomb looting and archaeology alike. What they uncover is astonishing. Rohrwacher paints the walls Etruscan red, places votive objects to accompany the souls of the dead, and gives the crew what ought to make their fortune: a marble statue of a goddess, and most importantly — intact. She is a nature goddess, depicted caressing the head of a lion curled around her legs and with a bird nesting in her hair. The crew know the value of what they have found. Amidst the beautiful wall paintings, the numerous delicate ceramic vessels, what stands out is this marble statue— they value her highly, above all these other riches, because the art market does. A hasty decision to knock off her head is made. This is another moment where Rohrwacher’s research shows: it will be easier and paradoxically safer to remove her from the tomb with the head taken off, and they can get paid twice — once for the body, and again for the head, and it will be all the more valuable when it is revealed that the head joins to a body already in the possession of the art brokers. This is a pivotal moment which triggers an ethical and spiritual crisis in Arthur from which he never fully recovers.
Arthur and his crew are misled into abandoning their tomb but escape just in time with the head of the statue. The art brokers make quick work of securing the remainder of the statue and other grave goods. A convincing provenance is promptly created and awarded to the headless statue. She is presented to a gaggle of prospective buyers (museum curators who Rohrwacher depicts as seemingly no different from dilettantish private art collectors) as “of inestimable value” in the line I quoted above.
Brushes with the carabinieri are aplenty: sometimes these encounters are played for comic effect, yet they also reveal a deeper moral significance. In one scene a suspicious carabiniere pulls Pirro and Arthur over. He spots a fascinus on Pirro’s dashboard and asks him if he is carrying property of the state. A conversation ensues over what it is: Pirro defers to Arthur’s superior knowledge about the artefact’s identification and Arthur responds: “un fallo apotropaico”. Neither Pirro nor the carabiniere can pronounce the unfamiliar term correctly, but both place a value on it. The film has us sympathise with Pirro and Arthur as the ‘rightful’ owners of the object, because they appear to appreciate it more, while the carabiniere is cast as an uncultured, legalistic enforcer with no sensitivity for cultural heritage, despite being its protector.
Rohrwacher is able to convey with subtlety and sensitivity the poverty (economic, social, and cultural) which would drive a person to sell their own heritage and yet calls it into question. What sets Rohrwacher apart from her peers, however, is that she is not merely content to ask difficult questions; she subtly suggests an answer in a young woman, significantly named Italia. She is the film’s conscience, but does not moralise from on high: she is not an archaeologist, art dealer, or carabiniere; she is struggling as much as the tomb-looters but rejects their actions. In an exchange with Signora Flora (played by a captivating Isabella Rossellini), Italia asks who owns the abandoned train station in Riparbella. Signora Flora responds that it belongs to no one, to which Italia asks how it can belong to no one. Signora Flora answers: “é publica”. Italia’s decision to start a women’s commune in the train station offers a poignant metaphor for how Italy’s (and indeed the world’s) cultural heritage belongs to no one and to everyone.
Mnemosyne Rice (she/her)
Mnemo is a postgraduate researcher in the Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin. Her thesis is on 'Decolonising' Minoan Archaeology: Museum Perspectives Past and Present. She is funded by the TCD Provost's PhD Project Award and works on the project the Many Lives of a Snake Goddess.
Mnemo's research profile