A dogged pursuit of truffle hunting art
Print Edition
“THE Truffle Hunters,” Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s charming documentary about old Italian men who scavenge truffles and the dogs they’re bound to, lists the canines with the appropriate respect in the end credits. Birba. Biri. Charlie. Fiona. Nina. Titina. Yari. These are some of the stars of “Truffle Hunters,” a lovely movie that delights in the noble scavengers of a dog-eat-dog world.
“The Truffle Hunters,” which is shortlisted for best documentary at the Academy Awards, is set in the northern Italy forests of Piedmont. Dweck and Kershaw, both cinematographers, film the truffle hunters — aging, sweet men practicing an ancient and secretive tradition — in painterly, pointillistic tableaux as they walk through autumnal forests, foraging with their dogs. The film, scored by composer Ed Cortes with retro Italian pop mixed in, conjures an otherworldly enchantment.
In between backwoods trips where their dogs smell their way to the high-priced delicacies, the hunters live humbly in old country homes.
Aurelio, 84, dines with his companion Birba, sitting on the table. Carlo, 88, never seems to stop smiling, especially when he manages to slip into the woods with his dog Titina. The younger, long-haired Sergio, a kindly but passionate soul, bathes with his pups — Pepe and Fiona — in a pink-tiled tub. This is a gentle realm every bit as bewitching as Narnia.
But the hunters’ earthy endeavor isn’t as simple as it seems. Their way of life is a dying one. The rare white Alba truffle is hard to find because of effects on the soil connected to climate change, while hunters are pressed for their secrets.
“If tomorrow something happens, your wisdom would be lost,” one man urges Aurelio. So sought-after are the truffles that their dogs are perpetually at risk of being poisoned by competitors. One hunter hammers furiously at his typewriter. “Dogs are innocent,” he writes.
The sense that the hunters — who are really in it for the dogs more than money — are, like their four-legged friends, innocents in a corrupt world only expands when the filmmakers follow the truffle food chain. Haggling over prices by headlight, the hunters seem always lowballed by a well-dressed buyer.
“The Truffle Hunters” is a richly allegorical documentary of a vanishing agricultural pastime. The truffles, weighed and sniffed at market, are delicacies.
But the finer things rhapsodized here are not expensive rarities.
What’s worth savoring is natural splendor, the charms of tradition, and, above all, a good dog. Those things aren’t delicacies, but they’re fragile just the same.
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