La chimera

Some art was not made for human eyes. La chimera doesn’t fit into that category, but the film concerns the antiquities in Italy’s vast array of tombs—statues, sculptures, and pottery crafted to pay homage to a god or supply a deceased person with the wares they would need in the afterlife. The origin and intention of this artwork hardly matter to the tombaroli, a band of tomb raiders who seek out Etruscan treasures and sell them to fences, who then sell them to museums and private collectors, with each transaction more profitable than the last. The small community of grave-robbing thieves scrapes by, living a downtrodden lifestyle, where the payday from unearthing a crypt could mean a few months of income. Never mind that Italian law forbids the practice and deems these artifacts state property, and that the country even has a special task force assigned to stop the smugglers and profiteers operating in this lucrative underground black market of historical relics. The characters in La chimera are just trying to scrape by; anything else isn’t their problem. Still, the question remains: Should art be exploited to serve the living, or should we continue to honor the wishes of those who have been dead for more than two thousand years?

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