Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics
Movies
The Truffle Hunters is the story of men, their dogs and their fungi.
These men live in a deep autumnal world, stepping over dew-covered and dying leaves in the heavy fog of an early November. It’s so quiet, speaking feels like a violation of village ordinance and you can’t help but wonder if life for these octogenarian mushroom chasers is eternally this way—quiet with a deep but unspoken reverence for the natural world; a consistent antagonism with modern life. These old men search for truffles, sell them and go home. That’s all their lives are, and they couldn’t be happier. Well, most of them.
Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw break from traditional documentary setup and forgo classic genre exposition like interviews, instead presenting the world of truffle hunters via conversations and shooting from distances that feel less personal. It’s as if we’re peeking from behind a tree or sitting at nearby table and overhearing a portion of a stranger’s life—we never hear a thing that isn’t dogs and truffles.
The humanism Dweck and Kershaw gift us is an impressive sensitivity for such early filmmakers, its simplicity its selling point and its fanciest gimmick a GoPro camera strapped to a truffle-sniffing dog. The film’s pacing is almost absurdly patient, and its lack of cuts keeps your eyes darting to catch each person’s deep expressions.
Yet, the crux of the story surprisingly ends up being the dogs and the symbiotic relationships forged between them and their owners. With such talent finding the best rare truffles, however, we discover an obsessive market that actively harms the men and their dogs. But despite that tension simmering underneath, The Truffle Hunters ultimately becomes about the unabashed joy of being alive and doing something beyond hedonistic pleasures: A life for autumn mornings, for shaved truffle atop an egg, for the 87-year old man who wants to hunt by night so he can listen to the same owl.
8
+ Peak wholesome cinema
- It comes to an end
The Truffle Hunters
Directed by Dweck and Kershaw
With Old Italian Men and the Dogs
CCA Cinema, 84 min, NR
