La Chimera

It is intriguing how Rohrwacher portrays grave sacking as a means to escape from society. "Not a real job", as the old woman's daughters imply. Yet these diggers exist in a parallel system: if the modern world can't fulfill their own dreams, one might as well look for it into the remnants of the past to pick up anything from those glory days. These sackers enjoy life to its fullest, regardless of circumstances.

Rohrwacher puts the perspective of a character who has lost his beloved one in order to approach this analogy through a more precise lens: His entire reason to partake into grave digging, explicitly rejecting the possibility of a normal life within society, is to feel closer to his love, as he remains in contact with death and the afterlife, implied by his supernatural perception. A goddess statue shows up in his life, bringing him thoughts of his love, yet it is only seen by others in the business as a means to earn money, and despairs when the head is severed. When this alternate system seems to be corrupted by the ideas of money and success over beauty and love, the main character declares to the severed head "You're not made for human eyes".

The film is filled with imagery. Dreams of birds flying over sheep as representation of this people's dreams of freedom, ghosts of the stolen graves coming to reclaim their memories that were capitalized on, and characters dressed in white and dirt, invoking the color of death, as the main character is regarded as dead by the system that he once belonged to. The ending is a natural extension of these concepts, as his rejection to the system leads him to the red thread that brings him to his dream.