La Ricerca review – paean to man who uses stone to make sense of the world

Reverential documentary reveals how Luigi Lineri has dedicated his life to creating a temple of rock For decades, Luigi Lineri has toiled along the Adige river in northern Italy where he has amassed an astonishingly vast treasure trove: rocks. A research endeavour, an artistic undertaking and even a form of time travel, this beautiful quest defies rigid categorisation. Guided by Lineri’s indefatigable passion, Giuseppe Petruzzellis’s meticulous documentary lends an ear to what the stones have to say.Using title cards of white text over a black screen, the film divides Lineri’s collection into a myriad of themes. While some pebbles point to the technical evolution of tools in prehistoric times, others bear the artistic traces left behind by human creativity. There’s a streak of the existential and the metaphysical as well. From egg-shaped relics to stones that resemble genitalia, the origins of life on Earth are wondrously embedded into these inanimate objects. In making a home for these wandering pieces of history, Lineri movingly describes the space as a shrine, a dedication rich with spiritual significance. Continue reading...