🎬 #211 Guest Post...
This week my good friend Narghi [also a filmmaker in her own right] has written about a director she’s been in love with for a few years.
Please enjoy
Bry
FILM: HAPPY AS LAZZARO
2018 DIR ALICE ROHRWACHER
2 hrs 07 minutes
I’m a big fan of this director. Her name is Alice Rohrwacher. I first heard of her on a Hinge date. He was surprised that I, a filmmaker, didn’t know her. Embarrassed yet determined I went home, and watched all her films that weekend. I was grateful for having discovered her world of magic. So this week I would like to recommend three of her films: The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro and La Chimera. Whether it’s a bunch of lovable grave robbers, led by Arthur - played by Josh O’Connor in La Chimera (which for me, felt like a beautiful love story, or a search for it) or fable-like retelling of exploited farmers in Happy as Lazzaro, her worlds are imbued with a sense of wonder and the divine.
Everything feels permeable, the past and the present, realism and magic, living and the dead. In the coming of age film, The Wonders, a young Gelsomina who is from a poor beekeeping family is drawn into the modern allure. A TV show arrives in her village and invites local farmers to showcase their products for a competition. Naturally she enters her family’s honey without her strict father knowing. What unfolds is a pull between tradition and modern life and Gelsomina in the middle. Across her filmography, everything is observed with naturalism and yet the scenes feel enchanted. Each film is quietly political yet unwilling to lose its poetry. Tactile and earthy, every film makes you feel like you can touch the magic, because you actually can - it is in our every day. You just have to notice.
Alice’s blend of magical realism and Italian neorealism is a mesmerising experience. For me, she is up there with the greats of Italian cinema.