Michael Dweck

(On Cable TV, December 2021) I’m sure there’s a fascinating documentary to be made about the ancient art of truffle hunting. But The Truffle Hunters isn’t it — or rather, the style in which writers-directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw go about it seems custom-made to annoy viewers expecting a traditional pace. Taking cues from their elderly subjects (men in their seventies and eighties, truffle hunters for decades), the film is a deliberately interminable slog — call it “slow cinema” if you must, but there’s no mistaking the lengthy shots, long periods of silence, endless nature cinematography and unhurried pacing of a film whose content does not justify its 84-minute running time. I’m sure that a negative review focused on the slowness of the film would please the filmmakers — the point here is the unhurriedness of the old men (and their dogs), as they seem to exist out of time in the Italian countryside. The Truffle Hunters is not uninteresting, but it takes so much time to make its point that by the time it’s made, we’re already looking forward to something else.