Sitting indoors, sheltered from the elements, connected to every corner of the planet via the internet, we are a digital people. What are the experiences we seek out in this virtual existence? They’re cute, calming, tranquil, natural – videos of animals playing or infants laughing, simple but profound wonders of the real world beyond our LED screens. We crave that which we actively repel: a return to the natural world, something many of us may only truly achieve again upon death. Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s The Truffle Hunters depicts such tranquil, natural experiences, transmitted to us via cables and signals and data rendered as pixels of light from the comfort of our modern homes.
The film’s protagonists are a few solitary, aging Piedmontese men and their beloved dogs, sniffing out precious white truffles in the foothills of the Italian Alps. They live in old, rustic countryside homes, venturing out either to pursue their increasingly arduous truffle hunt, or in some cases simply to enjoy their pastoral surroundings, having quit the hunting game and vowed never to return.
If this sounds like a snapshot of a bygone era, that’s because it very nearly is. Dweck and Kershaw have opened up a view onto a rare way of life in a small, isolated nook of northwest Italy. The old ways have endured here in part due to rural Europe’s insistent grip on its various heritages, in part due to the white truffle’s resistance to cultivation. These hunters sell their hauls to the region’s thriving haute cuisine industry, their rough, dirty, knobbly treasure comically sold at auction upon red velvet cushions before a sea of press photographers or placed incongruously in pinot noir glasses and pored over by old money types, identifying notes in the truffles’ aroma.
Business is tough. Snooty city types goad the retired hunters into revealing their secret spots, harangue them into accepting less for their produce, reject produce for the presence of a few grams of soil on the surface or snatch truffles from the hands of waiting staff to examine them as they dutifully grate it onto their eggs. Our hunters are dogged, obsessive, most content when out roaming the forests with their canine companions, each as obedient as a show dog, as clever as an assistance dog and twice as happy as either. The film’s most joyful moments are reliably dog-centric: the camera strapped to a dog’s head as it races through the woods in search of their truffle targets. Its most joyless moment is, predictably, in their absence – poison has been distributed through the area, an alarming development that the hunters don’t mull over very long. It’s as apparent to them as it soon becomes to us: corporate concerns are moving in and they’re prepared to do so violently.
The Truffle Hunters is abundant in such enriching material, the knotty complexities of real life in the modern world both impinging on the hunters’ otherwise placid existence and setting it in sweet relief. Theirs is a simple, beautiful lifestyle, surrounded by glorious woodland, accompanied by man’s best friend. Typically, movies that prominently feature dogs are soulless and artificial, all dead-eyed tricks and open-mouthed grins to please the kids. By the way, the science suggests that an open-mouthed expression or upturned lip corners in dogs isn’t actually a smile but rather an indication of a relaxed state of mind or, in some cases, an inducement of happiness in their owner, who may respond warmly when they make such a face, thinking it’s a human-style grin. Still, Dweck and Kershaw show us these most marvellous creatures at their happiest – hunting, eating, tails ever wagging. For that alone, this is a delightful film.
If it never quite ascends to the level of masterpiece, it perhaps wasn’t designed to. The Truffle Hunters feels like an intentionally humble film, one that doesn’t mythologize or aggrandize its subjects since to do so would be to contradict everything about these men, everything that makes their way of life so special. The essential value of the natural world is inherent; that of a life lived in close connection to it is self-evident. These are happy animals – both humans and dogs – addicted to their pursuits, perhaps, but fundamentally content. The closer they are to the natural world they know and love so well, the happier they are. Their circle is full, they’ve come back to nature and it’s a pleasure just to spend some time watching them, even if it is via distant, intangible, digital means.
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