La Grotte des rêves perdus

I've had really high hopes for 3D since Avatar impressed me last year but have only ever been disappointed since. All this retro fitting, remakes and flickering action sequences has really started to bug me. So, when a few months back I heard Herzog was working on a 3D documentary film, I couldn't help but grin. Finally, I thought, a 3D film that isn't going to be a bloated blockbuster. This films subject The Chauvet Cave in southern France was only discovered in 1994. It contains perhaps the most extraordinary array of cave paintings dated from between 23,000 to 30,000 years ago as well as extraordinary calcite formations, stalagmites/stalactites and ancient bones of creatures long migrated from the continent. The cave was apparently sealed by a landslide many millennia ago which has preserved everything perfectly. It's really something special to see and the sense of great privilege is conveyed by Werner early on in his very proud introduction. He is the only filmmaker to ever have been allowed access to the cave and throughout I couldn't help picturing everyone at the BBC and Discovery Channel shrugging jealously. The picture starts with some really beautiful shots of the French vinyards and mountains near the cave. It's presentation is what we've come to expect and it's instantly engaging. Long roving shots from a remote flying camera, hand-held POV's up mountain paths. The problems only start when we get inside the cave. Werner explains that the equipment that they could take in has to be very limited and they use non-professional camera gear. This isn't necessarily the problem though, we can take it with a pinch of salt. The real problem is in the 3D. First of all there is little light in the cave and so the gain is pushed into the camera signal and there's a lot of digital noise, especially in the dark areas, of which there are a lot. Now, noise/grain is always forgivable, until it starts dancing around in 3D, then it gives you a terrible headache. A lot of the shots are lit solely by a moving torch light and the constant re-focusing of your eyes only strains them further. However. the cave is quite amazing and we get to see it in detail. Later in the film some much better lit 3d shots are shown that really should have been used throughout. Footage of the cave is interspersed with interviews with various characters. The decision to use a rather generic voice over in place of subtitles for these interviews was certainly a small misstep and dilutes it a touch, but the film is not without it's moments. There are a couple of hilarious exchanges where Werner has typically cut someone off too early or left them hanging when they have finished. I do get the sense that he has become self aware and when chuckles are raised as Werner describes a cave painting as "Proto-cinema" I detected at least a hint of self parody, which I don't mind at all. The film winds up with the most spectacularly detailed shots of all, they do linger on a bit too long and I think the back half of the film would benefit from a cut of about 10 minutes. Having said all this, despite the technical distractions, the film is a semi-triumph in the way Encounters at the end of the world was. Some really great personal touches and a fascinating subject, but for god's sake see it in glorious 2D. 7/10

As much as I love Herzog's feature films, it's in his documentaries that I feel he really excels and this one is no exception. Regardless of being faced with extremely restricted access to the Chauvet caves, the subject matter and Herzog's unique angle on story telling make this one of the most compelling documentaries I've ever seen. His documentaries always have a way of moving me, be it in the passion and determination in the people he studies like Dr Graham Dorrington and Timothy Treadwell or in the sense of awe inspired by the environments he focuses on like in Encounters at The End of The World and this one was no different, right from the start I was overcome with the beauty of the caves and the drawings on the walls.

The context and hypotheses given by the interviewees only helps to deepen the sense of wonder as each section of the cave is discussed in turn by everyone from the chief scientist to art historians, to a master perfumer, and in typical Herzog fashion, many of them are quite eccentric and add some humorous touches along the way. Throughout the film, these specialists, along with Herzog's narration really set your mind racing and I went to bed last night still thinking about the cave's mysteries.

The sign of a good film is never wanting it to end and during his last visit to the cave, the film fades to black a number of times, each time left me praying that we were going to be allowed to see just a bit more. Films like this help to open your eyes and remind you that outside the boring drudgery of our 9-5 existence, there is a whole world of beauty and mystery for us to explore and by leaving us with the allegorical example of crocodiles living in a nearby artificial tropical habitat, Herzog leaves you asking questions about the way we lead our modern life that will last long after you've left the cinema.

This is a truly awful mess. Harzog's reputation must have swayed many critics, preventing them, perhaps out of overawed politeness, from admitting that this is too long and too empty, and not at all helped by the director's vaporings. He wonders rhetorically, at one point, whether 'We are the crocodiles of the future gazing into the distant past' or some such nonsense. (I liked him better when he was shoving boats over mountains.) This business comes at the end, when we (for what reason?) visit a nuclear power station whose waste heat is being used (again, for what reason?) in a kind of hot house to raise crocodiles. Another more important irrelevancy is a prolonged visit with museums elsewhere in Europe; there we hear about the sort of humans who never entered our cave. There are numerous interviews with experts; they convey little except that they are quite impressed with themselves. One of them proposes that the ancient cave artists used spears made of wood with a sharp piece of bone for a point, and insist on demonstrating his ineptitude in throwing it (at nothing). Another plays 'The Star-Spangled Banner' on a bone flute. Another talks about what we can see in a specific painting--but we can't, as the camera doesn't pause for a look.

The art? It's fantastic stuff, thrillingly beautiful--and my experience of it was damaged by Herzog's refusal to recognize the fact: there isn't very much of it, and showing the same images over and over and over again seriously dilutes their impact, especially when accompanied by varying (often awful) lighting; gassy, fake-cosmic narration (what WAS Herzog smoking??); and a score that could be used as a substitute for water-boarding. All this babble and repetition is necessary because Herzog never had enough material to make into a movie. National Geographic would have done this in an hour, not 90 minutes, done it better, and not wasted any resources on 3D.

Unprecedented access? Yes! 32,000 years old? Probably! Moving and beautiful art? Yes, but so little that my wife's comment sums it up well: 'This isn't a movie. It's ten great postcards.'

Don't miss auteur Werner Herzog's memorable documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the French Chauvet Cave. It contains the earliest extant art work of humanity from over 30,000 years ago. Paleolithic renderings of animals such as horses, lions, and cave bears, some in motion as if early filmmaking ("a form of proto-cinema," Herzog says) are rendered so lifelike by the film that I'm satisfied to have gotten as close as is possible without damaging the environment.

With special permission from the culture ministry and only a few hours per day, Herzog takes a non-professional 3-D camera and a few scientists and crew into the cave, which was sealed by a landslide some 20, 000 years ago and therefore in pristine shape. So careful are the French that they plan to construct a theme park with exact reproduction of the Cave in order to satisfy the public's natural interest in seeing the drawings but yet keep them from spoiling the treasures with their breaths.

3-D aids appreciation of the curvatures of the caves and the rich dimensions of the drawings, about 400 of them, and the cave-bear fossils and scratches. Ernst Reijseger's understated orchestration complements the lyrical and mysterious world that Herzog's voice cradles.

Because no one is allowed to walk outside the small walkway and few humans will ever enter, an eerie Egyptian tomb-like atmosphere pervades, captured by Herzog's pensive, wistful ruminations about mankind. For the director of such eccentric films as Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, both about mysteriously powerful humans, and similarly the documentary Grizzly, about an odd bear lover, this film is evidence of the filmmaker's wide-ranging zest for the inscrutable spiritual roots of secular achievement and madness.

Of course, there's the romantic take by the French scientists and narrator Herzog, who all describe hearing the voices of these ancient homo-sapien artists echo in the chambers. Herzog's inscrutable post script, perfectly in character with this out-there director involves nuclear reactors, warm water, and thriving alligators. When you figure out his meaning of the doppelganging albino alligators, write me with your answer, for I'm still trying to figure it out.

Meanwhile, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a superior documentary with the right combination of visual clarity and authorial insight to make everlastingly memorable the forgotten dreams of our ancestors and ourselves.

No one shoots 32,000 year-old cave paintings like Werner Herzog. First off, they're not allowed. The storied German filmmaker was recently granted unprecedented access to Chauvet caves in south France, which house the earliest known human paintings. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is the latest in his library of offbeat and mostly fascinating documentaries. Of course, Herzog's unique perspective is as much a draw as the subject matter itself — the man could make a movie about dirt and I'd be the first in line.

Fortunately, he's dealing with no such handicap here. The paintings that line Chauvet are beautiful, perfectly preserved, and enigmatic. But it's their technique that's most impressive. The conception that early man doodled only rudimentary stick figures and geometric animals is a fallacy, as the craft on display in Cave of Forgotten Dreams is staggering. So much so that early analysis doubted the authenticity of the drawings. Sealed beneath a thick layer of calcite, however, carbon dating proved them genuine.

In truth, there are no depictions of man on the walls of Chauvet. Instead, most panels appear an altar to the animal kingdom, with awesome recreations of bison, horses, lions, and now extinct wooly rhinos. Painted from memory in a dark recess of the cave, the images could only be seen by firelight. Art historians speculate that in those flickering flames, the drawings might have appeared to take life, which Herzog equates to a sort of "proto-cinema." Also of special interest to the director is a bison with a woman's body painted onto the curvature of a stalactite.

Complete with bizarre metaphors, inner musings, and tangential conversation, there can be no mistaking the author of Cave of Forgotten Dreams. At times, the filmmaker even seems aware that he's being Werner Herzog. Not every one of his digressions proves equally illuminating, but you can't really complain about Herzog being Herzog in a Herzog documentary.

Funded in part by the History Channel, his input is infinitely more valuable considering the sterile TV special this might have been. His knack for compelling autobiography proves one of the most intriguing aspects of the film, and rather than work around his crew and equipment, Herzog mines drama from their creative difficulties. The team was permitted inside for just a few brief hours per day, and restricted to two foot wide metal walkways once there. The many precautions and restrictions protect the integrity of the cave floor, and the still fresh footprints and animal remains that have survived there for so long.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams isn't Herzog's best work by any stretch of the imagination, but at almost 70, it's amazing he's still up for the Indiana Jones routine. From the Peruvian rainforest in his youth to Antarctica and now some light spelunking, Herzog is one of the most traveled filmmakers alive. That he can still churn out progressive, stimulating entertainment is a rarity among artists his age.

And as obtuse as it may be, Herzog's ideology is invaluable. Through his eyes, Chauvet cave is a wonder to behold; he captures the transcendent beauty of the paintings and ruminates on the lives of their anonymous creators. Though sometimes he overstates his own eccentricity, the through line of art as an essential human quality circumvents his digressions. Our ability to appreciate the creative output of a society millennia removed from our own is a powerful concept. Here's hoping folks from the year 34,000 appreciate Herzog as much as we do.