La Chimera (2023)
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher
No — La Chimera is not woke, scoring 10 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
For a film that begins with a man being ejected from a train for his manners, La Chimera carries itself with uncommon gentleness.
Consciousness Markers
There is a critique of the antiquities trade — tombaroli fencing looted Etruscan goods, Spartaco auctioning artifacts to curators — and a communal squat of evicted single mothers. This reads as an ethical/spiritual lament over commodifying the dead rather than a systemic anti-capitalist polemic.
The film assembles an international cast (British lead Josh O'Connor, Brazilian actress Carol Duarte, Italian veterans), but this reflects Rohrwacher's artistic choice for a European co-production rather than a deliberate diversity mandate. No casting is framed around identity representation.
Italia is a willful, sympathetic figure and the film ends in a squat of single mothers, but the story is a magical-realist meditation on loss and the past, not a feminist thesis. Female agency exists naturally without commentary.
Rohrwacher's film is lyrical, enigmatic, and allusive rather than didactic; it never stops to instruct the audience on a moral position.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes appear anywhere in the narrative.
The film engages Italian regional and class dynamics but has no racial consciousness theme whatsoever.
No environmental or climate themes are present.
No body-positivity themes or messaging.
No neurodivergence themes or characters.
The film is a fictional magical-realist tale with no historical revisionism agenda.
Why it received this score
For a film that begins with a man being ejected from a train for his manners, La Chimera carries itself with uncommon gentleness. Alice Rohrwacher sets the story in 1980s Tuscany, where Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a British archaeologist with a criminal record and a dowsing rod, drifts between a crumbling estate and a band of cheerful tomb robbers. He is searching for Beniamina, a woman who is missing or dead, and the film declines to settle the question. The Etruscan dead keep whispering to him. Everyone else keeps digging.
The casting is international, a first for this director: a British lead, a Brazilian actress as Italia, Italian veterans in the margins. That is the arithmetic of a European co-production, not a statement of purpose, and nothing in the frame is arranged to be noticed as representation. Italia, the housemaid hiding two children in her employer's house, is willful and sympathetic, and the film ends in a squat of single mothers occupying an abandoned station. Female agency moves through the story quietly, with no thesis attached. Whatever social conscience the picture carries stays buried in the soil along with the grave goods.
Where the film does press, gently, is on the trade in looted antiquities. Spartaco auctions a headless goddess to curators on a boat. The tombaroli fence grave goods for a pittance. Arthur finally hurls a statue's head into the lake, to general fury. This is a lament over the commodification of the dead, an ethical and spiritual complaint, not a systemic polemic, and Rohrwacher would never stoop to one. Her film is lyrical, allusive, occasionally baffling, and it never stops to explain what we ought to think. We are left to classify it ourselves. That is the only honest arrangement, and the ledger remains open.
That is the whole of it: a lovely, elusive object, warm toward its thieves, indifferent to the sermon, and content to let the past keep its own counsel. We file it accordingly, with regret that so few films trust us enough to do the same.
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Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera.
Questions about La Chimera
Is La Chimera woke?
No — La Chimera is not woke, scoring 10 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does La Chimera have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Eat the Rich at 20.
How does La Chimera compare to other 2023 movies?
It ranks #149 of the 200 films from 2023 we've scored; their average is 24. The wokest is Origin (84).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.