The medium is the message in Alice Rohrwacher’s latest movie, La Chimera. We follow Arthur, a psychic grave robber stealing his way through the Italian countryside. I watched the movie with a friend on a Saturday evening. I’d just started a new job where I got to wear a suit every day. I liked wearing a suit. Most of my friends think I’ve thrown away my life, my artistic integrity, and my innocence by doing this, but I don’t mind it as much. I go to bed early now. I feel well-rested knowing that reality never sleeps.

Unlike me, Arthur has thrown his life away. The film begins with a train ride immediately after he gets released from prison. Arthur has a gift–he can communicate with the dead. He confers his spiritual findings to his grave robbing friends, and they loot Roman tombs for silver and gold. I felt enraged in the darkness of the theater as I watched them rip off the head of a priceless statue. I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a child. I’ve always treated the past with respect, internally and externally. For instance, I collect tintypes from the late 19th century. Sometimes, I look into the faces of the subjects of these photos, and I wonder if they’ll ever remember me.

Throughout La Chimera, we're placed into Arthur’s dreams where he chases after his dead girlfriend. A single thread from Beniamina’s dress can be seen floating across the countless tombs that Arthur and his friends decimate. Beniamina’s thread is the medium. It presents something extra-temporal that exists outside of Arthur’s selfish despondency, like a stepping stone into another dimension. One without order, where the past and present are lies and the future is forgotten. A dimension where life is driven by sheer impulse, like the way my skin bristles whenever I hear the sound of rustling foliage in the late springtime.

After the night was over, I took my friend back to his place in the Valley. While I drove, I stared into the darkness of Laurel Canyon passing before me, and I saw my reflection in the glass, illuminated by the headlights. And soon enough I could see my dad’s face and my mom’s face and in their faces I could see my grandparents’ faces and then I could see the complexions of my great-grandparents and then it stretched further back to my ancestors and they all had the same sunken eyes and I tried to look past their faces but the further I squinted the blurrier the picture grew and soon enough I came face to face with the terrible effigy of time itself–wet from recent rain, clogged with dirt, oozing with the flesh of vegetation.

I thought about the movie some more and listened to the wind hitting the windshield. It suddenly occurred to me that Arthur was falsely claiming to be an archaeologist when, in fact, he was a prisoner of time. There is no bail for a prisoner of time.