The Truffle Hunters

This poetic documentary is well named. It won’t tell you anything about truffles other than they are prized, expensive, and hard to find. It won’t tell you anything about how to hunt for truffles, other than it takes a dog and it’s highly competitive. But it will paint a beautiful portrait of a half-dozen Northern Italian truffle hunters, mostly elderly men who think of little else. Just ask Carlo’s wife, who keeps telling her 80-plus husband to stop truffle hunting at night. At dusk, she stands outside and calls his name in vain.

Documentary filmmakers Michael Dweck (also a writer) and Gregory Kershaw (also a cinematographer) received intimate access to the hunters’ lives as they scour the woods for the buried treasure they seek, as they share stories of the unscrupulous (and unseen) poachers invading their territory, and as they interact with their dogs, to whom they are closer than to any humans. One hunter bathes with his favorite pooch, then proceeds to blow-dry the dog’s fur while both are still in the tub. Don’t try this at home.

Fact is, some of the scenes in the hunters’ homes or holding conversations at restaurants seem so gorgeously framed and lit, and so concisely dramatic, that one has to assume the hunters are performing for the camera. Visually sumptuous, The Truffle Hunters often seems closer to cinema verité than documentary. But it’s an appropriate approach to capture the particular cultural phenomenon these men represent, another ritual-heavy tradition being worn away by greed. The Italian white truffles the hunters dig up sell for upwards of $3,000 per kilo — a price so high that one buyer refuses to consider the purchase of a sample until it’s been more thoroughly cleaned of a few grams of dirt.

The film is a romanticized glimpse into the hunters’ lives, a snapshot rather than a biography, since all we know about them is what we see and hear. For most, names and ages remain as mysterious as how they got into this racket in the first place. The dog bather is also a solo rock drummer — why? Who knows? The hunter who looks like Rasputin is typing up an angry manifesto. One elderly gent performs a jig-like dance. It’s all intriguing, but don’t expect a lot of narrative connections.

After the incredible success of Fantastic Fungi in Asheville two years ago, I imagine the audience for The Truffle Hunters here to be considerable. And it’s an admirable effort, short-listed for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. But while Fungi was packed full of facts and experts, Hunters is painterly and impressionist. You may want to do some Googling after a viewing to learn more about this particular fungus and its seekers — to discover, for example, that the pigs used in much of the rest of the world to root out truffles are outlawed in Italy, which led to the training of hunting dogs.

The film attempts to get into the head of these mutts, even employing a “dog cam” that provides the hunting beast’s point of view as she runs through the woods. But while we know what the hunters think of their beloved dogs, cherished and coddled, we can only imagine what the dogs think of their quirky, truffle-obsessed humans.

Grade: B. Rated PG-13 but suitable for fungi fans of any age. Now showing at Grail Moviehouse.

(Top photo: Sony Pictures Classics)

A truffle hunter bathes and blows dry his truffle-hunting dog in “The Truffle Hunters.”