(Credits: Far Out / 01 Distribution)

Acclaimed and prolific Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s latest production is a unique film that might be best described as a magical realism heist movie. Held together by the running thread of archaeology, it provides a lively, entertaining story that takes in crime, lost love, mysticism, and history. In director Rohrwacher’s hands, it wavers between realistic storytelling and the dreamlike or uncanny, sometimes allowing the lines to blur between the two, making the mingling of present and past, or of reality and myth, a central theme. The quick-moving story provides multiple plot twists leading to a surprising, slightly fairy-tale ending that ties everything together. It also, for those who enjoy ‘Easter eggs’, scatters subtle references to classic Italian films throughout.

The story begins with Arthur (played by Josh O’Connor), a British archaeology scholar with a vague past, being released from an Italian prison and warmly received by a group of local thieves who traffic in antiquities. It emerges that this gang highly values Arthur for his comically unlikely talent: the ability to locate ancient artefacts by dowsing. The crew, hoping to find a trove of artefacts that will make them rich, continue to narrowly elude the police as Arthur leads them from one promising site to another. Arthur is following his own rather dismal path as he copes with the death of his lover, Beniamina, whose memory keeps him in Tuscany, and maintains contact with her mother, the aristocratic Flora, played by the great Isabella Rossellini.

The thieves’ finding and ransacking of Etruscan treasure troves, while evading a small but determined team of detectives, provides fun and excitement, but the plot gradually veers into more serious issues. Arthur’s grief over the deceased Beniamina affects his decisions and gives a dark purpose to his work, a plot thread that ultimately becomes significant. The story also addresses the question of when the mining of artefacts, including the opening of Etruscan graves, crosses the line into personal or cultural transgression, even sacrilege.

When Flora’s caretaker, Italia (Carol Duarte), begins to follow the band of thieves like a personified conscience, expressing her views on their thefts and disruption of burial sites, she has an unexpected impact on Arthur, leading toward a surprising conclusion that allows the mystical aspect of the film to come to the fore. The film’s director and screenwriter has expressed her intention to create a world in which “the visible and invisible are intertwined,” and she accomplishes this in a moving and often entertaining way.

The beautifully shot scenery of Tuscany provides a peaceful backdrop for the movie; it’s a favourite filming location for Alice Rohrwacher, who was raised in the area and has always been fascinated by the region’s history. The director commented during a Cannes interview that she had long been fascinated by the fact that many other cultures had lived in the area in past centuries and that there are countless remains of these cultures to be found beneath the Tuscan ground. Archaeologists had often worked in the area. Rohrwacher had encountered grave robbers as a young girl and had long thought a story about them would be interesting.

She mentioned the choice to add a character who is named Italia yet is not from Italy but from far away (like a relic of past inhabitants come to life), commenting, “You need a foreigner to show you how to really see a place.” The director was particularly inspired by the idea of a past culture which made beautiful things not for display but in order to hide them as a tribute to the unearthly and what that could say about the modern impulse to override the culture’s secrecy. It is for this reason that the script focuses on Etruscan burial sites, as “the Etruscans dedicated their art… to the invisible”. The search for Etruscan artefacts allows difficult ethical questions to emerge, brought to light by the character Italia, concerning who owns these ancient items and who has a right to decide how they are dealt with.

While Arthur is the most central character, the director intended this to be an ensemble movie and has Arthur share the spotlight with multiple interesting characters. Rohrwacher commented in an interview that audiences are used to seeing movies built around one hero, a “special soul”, and filmmakers are not used to giving up the individual vision and making a collective story. The movie, she says, is Arthur’s story but also the story of many people involved or affected by the action.

The varied perspectives are a major part of the plot. Another feature is the distinctive look of the film, which is achieved by using multiple types of cameras, including a standard 35mm for the main narrative and a small handheld 16mm camera to give a different look to certain fanciful scenes and for purely decorative shots. This approach enhances the feeling of a meeting of two dimensions – as do some of the visual choices, such as the carefully timed shots of birds in flight, which for the Etruscans symbolized destiny.

Director Rohrwacher expressed the desire “to find in one man the story of men” and to encourage viewers “to ask ourselves just how unlucky and comical, how moving and violent, humanity really is”. This complicated, many-layered film doesn’t attempt to provide easy answers but succeeds in exploring intriguing questions in vivid detail.