La Chimera
Wow.... La Chimera is, hands down, such a beautiful film. It started with possibly a memory of Arthur's, displaying Beniamina, a dead lover of his.
After serving in jail for grave digging, Arthur got onto a train, hoping to get back home (but where is it?) where he was unknowingly accompanied with the souls whose tombs he has robbed (and souls who would follow him wherever he went later on). Now it makes you think, all the people who were staring in the train's hallway, were they trying to feed their curiosity as to finally get a look at the person who has stolen their 'goods'? (Even the wee dog, then?)
There is this... Chimera. His only gift which on the surface brought prosperity to everyone but himself. Every time he connected with it, felt it--all it did was send him tumbling down, the upside down image representing his state of being 'underground', leaving a dizzying concoction of frames to those who see it, disorienting--almost.
After all the time he spent in search for his love, alas he has found it through the help of a 'witch'--long live Italiana--who was the only one who could wake him up from the trance. Where Beniamina was an eternal memory, Italiana was a fleeting reality, and yet for Arthur, whose life has been deeply carved into the familiarity of the past... even when he was on the ground, there was only going under.
They are not for the human eyes. They are for the souls who understand it.
That scene in the abandoned station especially felt way too true, Riparbella... it somewhat coming across to me as a resonance to today's life.
"Is it everyone's or is it no one's?" (A direct argument to tomboroli's ideology, and also Arthur's way of living, basically)
"Yes, we're staying here temporarily. Even life is temporary."
Arthur's silent language with Italiana being the symbol of their liaison was also used very gently, as an isolated world where only they could converse without interruption, before he set off to reunite once again with whom he has been trying to find. And in the end, it was that cursed gift of his again that brought him back to the red thread, its single strand pulled from two different dimensions, underground and upperground. But nonetheless, they were to embrace again, at least once the soil collapsed... when the dead and the living used to overlap, now there was the eventual dissolve of that distinction.
There are further questions, of course, but I'll let them marinate with me in the meantime...