Der letzte Neandertaler - AO

Ao. The Last Hunter is a story about a Neanderthal hunter who following the death of his wife and child and with disease ravaging his clan leaves to find his birthplace.

Along the way his path clashes with Homo Sapiens and in particular a heavily pregnant young girl and her baby. An unlikely bond grows between the two as they journey south whilst being chased by a tribe they escape from.

The story of the film is simple but it's strength lies in the great depiction of our distant ancestors. Obviously no-one knows for sure if Neanderthals ever even met Homo Sapiens but I like to think that this is a pretty accurate depiction of life in that time. The make up artists certainly did wonders transforming the lead actor into looking like a Neanderthal.

It is beautifully filmed with some great scenery and it seems like a lot of research was done prior to filming as it goes someway to debunking a few Neanderthal myths.

If you're on the look out for something a bit different and have any interest in prehistoric life then this is well worth watching.

Perfect dentistry and cosmetics galore in the land before time.

Jacques Malaterre, a maker of TV fiction (mainly TV films and series episodes), discovered prehistory and more generally speaking - the history of man - when he was chosen to direct the highly successful documentary "L'odyssée de l'espèce" (2003). He was so captivated by the matter he was assigned to explore that he gradually became a specialist of the subject himself. With the help of famed paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens as a co-writer and scientific adviser he also directed "Homo Sapiens" (2005) and "Le sacre de l'homme" (2009). So it is hardly surprising to see him further explore his favorite subject in a new work, the difference this time being that he has chosen the big screen to express himself in preference to television.

"Ao, le dernier Neandertal", which illustrates the thesis (confirmed by recent discoveries based on DNA analysis) that some Neandertal and Homo Sapiens had offspring together) undoubtedly benefits from this change of scope, which does not mean that it is the best in Malaterre's four-installment saga. Very spectacular indeed, the film has epic qualities when it comes to Ao's struggle for survival in all weather conditions, aesthetic assets when it describes the beauty and cruelty of nature of wild life. And actor Simon Paul Sutton is very believable as Ao, the desperate creature who sees all the members of his clan die around him, managing to express his feelings mostly through looks, grunts and body language. Which is some kind of a feat. Last but not least is the creation of a consistent specific language (that the viewer does not understand with the exception of one or two words). Too bad then that Malaterre resorted to a commentary in modern language to explain exactly what happens. Jean-Jacques Annaud had been able to do without such an expedient in his amazing "Guerre du feu".

On the other hand, for all the modernity of its scientific approach, the film is nothing else but a boy meets girl story, complete with the usual clichés: boy and girl don't get on/ love is born/ and they live happily ever after. Worse, the female lead, Aruna Shields, is too pretty to be true. Luckily, her acting is good, which partly compensates for the initial mistake, but you need a good dose of suspension of disbelief to really come into this aspect of the story.

Despite this weak point, "Ao" remains worth watching. Even if a few details leave to be desired, you really feel you are living a long long time ago constantly asking yourself whether YOU could have survived in such a hostile environment. This is enough to justify the price of your movie ticket, I think.

AO: THE LAST HUNTER is the latest in a line of prehistoric epics. These films seemed to originate with the cheesy back-projected movies of the 1940s before Hammer had a mini resurgence of them in the 1960s with ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. and its follow-ups. They were back in the 1980s with the likes of the influential QUEST FOR FIRE, but since then the genre has been a little quiet.

This film is French and unsurprisingly for the French it plays out as a love story for the most part. The hero is a wandering Neanderthal hunter who meets up with a woman who just so happens to be a Homo Sapien. The two fall in love, but not before the surprisingly modern plot elements play out. And that's the main problem with AO: it feels very modern in places, particularly with a modern-language voice over narration which really feels out of place, and the usual gender issues which would play out on a modern romantic comedy.

As a film, this does have a fair few strengths. The visual look is strong with fine cinematography bringing to life the snowbound terrain. The effects are strong and the look of the Neanderthals is an authentic one. There are some truly exciting moments, like the polar bear fight. It's so unfortunate, then, that most of the running time is wasted with romantic nonsense, when the director had the change to make something so much more profound.

Just when I thought there wasn't any of this type of escapism entertainment left for my consumption, I find out about Ao: The Last Hunter (2010), a perfectly satisfactory supplement for my immense craving of non-fictionalised caveman-related culture (as in, how their real-life society actually once was). After going on an epic primal journey for sheer savage survival in Quest for Fire (1981), taking a look at inter-species tensions in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), witnessing a literal train-wreck in 10,000 BC (2008) and learning how we bonded with primitive hunting dogs from wolf domestication in Alpha (2018), how does this film stack-up against all these other ones? In short, it's just ever so slightly above average. Sooner or later, I thought filmmakers would've eventually hit a creative slump by always confining a majority of these caveman movies in a nondescript region of prehistoric Europe and having them take place during the last major Ice Age. But nope, they still somehow managed to incorporate this specific geological time period into yet another solid adventure film with a strong narrative focus.

This film's story starts out like any other for the genre, in the average ordinary life of a Neanderthal man who's being a good provider for his tribe's people by heading out on hunting-gathering quests. On top of all that, he recently became a doting father after his loyal mate gives birth (aw!). However, a sudden unprecedented attack on his people results in the genocidal slaughtering of his family (including his newborn child). This uncalled for assault was calculated by a scouting-party of cruel Cro-Magnon hunters that happened to stumble across the nearby hideout spot at their cave's entrance, which just goes to shows that even back then (thousands and thousands of years ago) there were very unjust conflicts between different human races for no apparent reason; other than the obvious fact that they were different. In the shocking aftermath of this brutally traumatic act which has fallen upon his once peaceful and disrupted lifestyle, not all is calm for his now scarred psyche as he contemplates about traversing back to the previous homeland of his old life (wherein his original family roots lie) whilst seething in a depressed state-of-mind. The movie does a nice job at chronicling this lonesome individual's odyssey on his exhaustingly long trek, navigation his way through the desolate mountainous valleys; all of which leads to some misadventures when he bumps into yet another tribal group, one that's more advanced but seemingly less-hostile. Will he have difficulty getting on with these strangers, or will things turn out alright for the poor fella in the end? (you'll just have to go and watch it for yourself to find out).

The scenery isn't anything superb and it's far from a showcase of stunning visuals, but the cinematography nonetheless gets the job done of being effective enough to keep one's attention (on a certain level, that is). I'm not entirely sure if the director watched Quest for Fire to do prep work for this movie, but in any case it greatly adheres to that film in-particular by having the same style of presentation, even more so than something like Clan of the Cave Bear. Also, even though the film doesn't have much to offer when it comes to prehistoric beasts, I'll forgive its lack of them for understandable reasons (mostly budgetary limitations). Something I really like and admire about all these types of movies is the fact that no matter where you are in the world (whether that be Western America or Eastern Asia, for example), the simple stories are still understandable and most of all you're still able to follow them quite easily without the aide of subtitles; thanks to the actors' facial-expressions, hand-gestures, body-movements and vocal-grunts. It's basically like a universal language that almost all of us can relate to, at least to some mild degree. No matter what dialect you may speak or what country you live in, it's inclusive to literally everyone on a worldwide scale. I'm sure it was no easy task on the performers' part because in order to pull this off and make it as convincing as possible, they had to arduously master the dying art of silent acting (a most impressive feat indeed).

Now then, on to a few of my nitpicks with the film's more technical aspects. Some of the compositing shots weren't very convincing, like the bear fight with Ao earlier on in the movie and a bison stampede he's trying to get clear from at some point later on (NOT a major story spoiler). The compositing in both of these sequences make the scenes feel slightly awkward to watch, because your brain's constantly alerting you to the fact that it's pretty obvious the two completely separate shots don't match-up perfectly together (they're not aligned properly, in other words). When you see the two aforementioned sequences for yourself, you'll notice how the scenes in question can be kind of disorienting at minor points with their rapid-fire editing, only making them last on-screen for a fraction of a few seconds at most. My guess is that they knew these already shot scenes didn't turn-out so well and I'm only assuming there was no time to reschedule for some major reshoots with alternate takes, which would most definitely explain why the editors frequently made the quick-cut edits in the way that they did as to compress the duration of the scenes' length down by just a bit. I'd say a little more superimposing work was needed to be done in order to make these loosely-edited scenes come-off less disjointed and appear more in-synchronisation with one another.

So all in all, I thought Ao: The Last Hunter was pretty darn good. The only slight negative I'd give this is that it's yet another one of these prehistorical adventure films that's set in Palaeolithic Europe, for the billionth time. I suppose it's because these filmmakers don't want to deviate or stray too far from this tried-and-tested formula. It's almost as if they're making a conscious effort on their part to play-it-safe by going down the conventional route and staying away from anything that'd be considered too niche for the mainstream public. Quest for Fire and Alpha were also set in Palaeolithic Europe, two quintessential crowning achievements I hold in high-regard as being a couple of the greatest, most authentic caveman motion-pictures ever conceived by modern mankind. But just for once, it'd be nice to see an ancient period piece that isn't confined to this one certain pre-historical location. Often times I keep thinking back to Missing Link (1988), which tackled the primordial beginnings of our extremely ancient ancestors in Pliocene Africa. With that movie, they were adventurous and willing to take a chance by setting their film's story elsewhere. In my mind, I can perfectly envisage an epic prehistorical film set in the Pleistocene Epoch of either North America, Asia or Australia. I really think there's a lot of untapped potential to be had with those overlooked ideas, having endless story possibilities.