Posted by Travis Keune in Documentary, General News, Review | 2 comments
CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D – The Review
When you’ve had a career as long and expansive as that of filmmaker Werner Herzog’s, the idea of slowing down may strike many as entirely reasonable… but, not for this man. His eclectic curiosity and passion for filmmaking seems to know no bounds, as is the case with his newest documentary CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS.
The film is sort of a guided tour through the Chauvet caves of Southern France, a monumental geological discovery made by pure chance. This massive cave was found to enclose an enormous and relatively pristine showcase of ancient rock art, as well as some critical important preserved bones of animals long since extinct.
To put it simply, if you’re an academic in the fields of art history, archeology, anthropology or paleontology, then CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is mandatory viewing. Especially when considering access to the cave is strictly controlled and extremely limited by the French government, due to the unmistakable significance of the cave’s contents.
As a film for the general viewing audience, however, my recommendation comes with a bit more caution. CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is a feature-length documentary commissioned, in part, by History Films, a branch of The History Channel. Given the historical and educational nature of the project, Herzog still cannot resist adding his own unique brand of philosophical and poetic musings.
CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is narrated by Herzog himself, as are most of his more recent documentary outings. At times as amusing as they are poignant, Herzog’s whimsically reflective ramblings add an undeniably quirky element to the otherwise straight-forward film. The relative visual blandness of the film has less to do with any shortcomings by the filmmakers as it does the strict limitations placed on the crew by French authorities regarding where the crew could walk, when and for how long they could shoot.
One way in which Herzog chose to implement additional visual appeal was to shoot the entire film in 3D. Not just parts, strategically deigned to enhance certain elements, but the entire film, from beginning to end. This ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword. While this choice definitely adds a lot to the showcasing of the rock art featured in the film (more about this in a moment), the rest of the film becomes a dizzying, even potentially nauseating ride as the camera tosses and tumbles up the cliff face to the cave and through the often tight and narrow cave passages. For this reason, I emphasize those with motion sickness view the film with great caution!
On the up-side, the use of 3D in CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS was a magnificent choice for conveying and enhancing the technique used in creating the rock art. The 3D technology actually allows the texture and colors of the art to pop, even come to life, emphasizing the artists’ uncanny ability to work with the contour of the rock walls of the cave to mimic a sense of life and motion. This is truly fascinating, as these cave paintings are 30,000 years old, making them the oldest known examples of rock art found to date.
Overall, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is far from being Herzog’s best documentary, but it does certainly succeed at being one of his most intriguing subjects. The pace can be a bit slow in parts, combined with the classical mood music; viewers may be tempted to nap at times. That aside, one thing Herzog has done is to take an idea and run with it, unimpeded by obstacles, proving once again that he’s the “Ironman” of indie filmmaking.
CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS in 3D opens in Saint Louis on May 6th at the Hi-Point Theatre.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Cave of Forgotten Dreams – Boston Globe | aquatinted.com - [...] is the best pick to direct documentary 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams …Philadelphia Daily NewsWe Are Movie Geeks -Philadelphia Inquirer -MiamiHerald.comall 45 ...
One star for the 3D visual experience, zero stars for the content. It is a truly amazing experience to have the brief glimpse into some of what was going on in the human mind some 30 – 40 thousand years ago. The 3D experience is as close we will ever get, since these caves are accessed only by a privileged few. Herzog and his crew had that privilege for a few hours or so. Conveniently for them, an elaborate metal pathway was already constructed, so elaborate in fact, that the workers went into the trouble of shaping the pathway around some of the stalagmites, and so one has to assume that these workers had a greater privilege yet, as this sure must had taken days to construct. The cave paintings not only leave us in awe, but they also leave us with questions, questions about our own nature and how it all began. This is where we get to the disappointing part of the movie. Not that we should expect any of these questions to be answered, but one would hope for some interesting information, something that the lucky scientist and historians have figured out already. But, all we really get is just a parade of circus scientists. I choose the word circus, not only because one of the “scientist/historian” had circus training, but it really wasn’t much more than that. Herzog’s seemingly Attenborough-like narrative, is disappointingly short on the Attenborough-like informative power. His choice of selecting imperial measurements units (miles, feet) in his narrative also reminds us, who helped to finance this project – US History Channel.
Beyond the awe expressed by everyone participating in the production, what kind of interesting information do we get ? Well, we have our circus scientist who leaves us with a magical conclusion that we are best to interpret these painting as the work of the spirits. Another scientist is so taken aback that he even proposes to rename our species from homo sapiens to homo religious. The evidence for that ? Well, I did not see it – they showed it to us from a limited angle and it required a lot of imagination, but apparently among all the paintings of animals they also found one that kinda resembles a half Venus figurine, half bison.
Then, we have a guy/scientist dressed in deer skin who “whistles” for us, through a replica of a caveman’s flute, the Star Spangled Banner tune, wow. I’m saying whistles, because the melody seemed to have been produced before it entered the flute. We also have another scientist who throws a spear, several times in fact, and then, himself, concludes he would have no chance in life of killing anything. And, to amaze us even more, we have a perfume maker who goes around these caves and smells them. From his acute sense of smell (he is well in his 60s) he then recreates (in his mind) what it would have been like to be one of the cave painters, 30 thousand years ago (in the time of the last Ice Age). Mr. Herzog then concludes this circus parade with a global warming commentary, looking at the cave paintings through the eyes of an albino crocodile – this is not a joke. One might laugh about it, but it left me seriously worried about my human heritage and the people I have to rely on to access it and to study it. What a shame.