La Guerre du feu

Stanley Kubrick's classic "2001" celebrates the first weapon, when a hairy primate through some burst of savage genius turns a useless thigh-bone into a dominating club. He thereby takes a giant first step in humanity's long pursuit of bigger and better weapons. On the other hand, "Quest for Fire" dramatizes humanity's other side: the civilizing arrival of the campfire. But not just any campfire; instead it's the security found in mastering the technique to make fire any time the tribe wants. As a result, the Cro-Magnons have for the first time some control over their environment and can take time to relax. That's made apparent at film's end when the clan gathers happily around crackling embers to relate stories through crude gestures and grunts. Perhaps the evolution of complex linguistic forms had its origins in just such relaxed moments, when imagination and thinking could take hold and get expression in the company of others.

There's also that overlooked moment when Naoh humbly approaches the lordly herd of marauding mastodons. Tufts of grass in hand, he bows his head in an unmistakable gesture of submission, to which the herd responds-- not very plausibly --by chasing away the attacking cannibal clan. The point here is that Naoh understands in that quiet moment that we must live humbly with those forces much greater than ourselves if we want to survive-- a possible seed of what would later become religious belief, whether in the forces of nature or in the supposed power of the supernatural.

Of course, this is all speculation. The filmmakers don't exactly hit you over the head with their messages. However, the point is that the film succeeds admirably in getting you to think about the natural history of what these lowly but momentous origins must have been like. Moreover, there are other suggestive moments, such as when the camera transitions from Rae Dawn Chong's pregnant belly to the distant full moon and humanity's far-off future. Some reviewers point out scientific flaws in the script and reject the film on that basis. But that misses the point. Of course the film is not a documentary, so no serious researcher would base a study on it. Nonetheless, the movie remains just that, a well-staged and provocative ninety minutes of unusual filmmaking. I've seen nothing like it before or since.