Truly Dreadful Film

Memorable, crazy movie

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A film that should touch the human in everybody. Werner Herzog's documentary "Cave of Forgotten dreams" brings images to the world, that have not been seen for over 20,000 years. This masterpiece in film takes us to view the oldest known pictorial works of art in human history some dating back as far as 32,000 years old. The artwork mainly consists of Horses, Lions and Bison of the time. Situated in a France, the "Chauvet caves" where discovered in 1994, up until that time the caves had been sealed completely by a rock fall and its contents locked in time. Herzog guides us poetically through the cave introducing us to the artwork made by humans of the upper Paleolithic era, offering interpretations from himself and eccentric experts. They include an archaeologist, a master perfumer and an anthropologist. Each of them puts in their own ideas and element of madness, coerced out by Herzog's peculiar questions. Often Herzog goes off track in his interviews and asks questions that would not normally spring to mind. This approach to telling the story purifies the concepts Herzog is trying to put across, Ideas of "The beginning of the human soul" and emotions and dreams of the ancient humans. This only magnifies the amazing and quite stunning story of the cave. Throughout the film Herzog perpetually looks for the human in all of his Interviewee's in an attempt to connect them to the human's of the past. I find the greatest achievement of the film is the bridge built by Herzog to the humans of the cave; he somehow restores a link over such an abyss of time that is truly remarkable. His poetic soliloquies require no further comment, only amazement and acknowledgment of the ideas he plants in your brain that grow if you let them. After the film I was left completely stunned at this beautiful delve into an ancient world and somehow I felt a strange empathy towards the humans of the time. The camera work and look of the film is gorgeous although within the cave Herzog is limited in his equipment and allowed only a few LED lights. Yet he manages to play with the shadows and textures of the paintings with light, enriching the visuals and creating movement. He try's to mentally take us to the cave and imagine the artists standing there, admiring their work by the light of fire's, as their paintings flicker, shift and move like real animals. Time and time again throughout the film you are left in state of awe, this film goes above and beyond the requirements of documenting; it reaches the heights of being culturally significant to the human community. An original music score was written for the film, it has a haunting quality. It plays mostly over images of the artwork, complimenting the camera work as the camera moves right as the animals face left. The illusion of movement is created with the lights and the music is appropriately titled "Shadow". This sequence in the film is so deep and raw with emotion, the animals really do appear real, as if in packs and out hunting. Herzog then explores outside the cave, introducing us to a Paleolithic flute made from ivory. A rather enthusiastic and possibly mad "experimental" archaeologist plays "star spangled banner" with the limited notes on the flute. This is yet again Herzog building a relationship between us and these wonderful humans of the past. Is he perhaps implying that 30,000 years ago, a man may have played that tune out of the flute, unaware of what that song would go on to represent? Or did it perhaps mean something then? There are few negatives that can be drawn from the film, and also for Herzog. Perhaps his fabrication of the lives of the ancient humans may be of an annoyance to the less poetically inclined, who want for concrete facts and no creative speculation. I find his style and vision faultless, if facts are what you are after then there are textbooks with them. Herzog provides so much more, that the only negative that can be cast upon him, will simply be a dislike to his film making in general. I will conclude as Herzog did exploring the ideas of humanness. I found this a very touching point to end the film on. His interviewee talks about the ideas that man has to communicate his surroundings, from the animals to the landscapes and humans themselves, there seams to be this urge to paint it, draw it or film it. Suggesting that visuals serve as a far greater articulation of human spirit than forms of oral language. Herzog suggests that this cave was possibly the start of such a communication with the future. A thought I had after the film was, what if the Humans of the cave could view this film, and how would they react to the wonder and amazement to their work? Would Herzog's interviewee's hypotheses come true, that these humans where trying to communicate their world to the future? It is perhaps that, but the real beauty in Herzog's outstanding film is that it will stand as a testament for humans of this civilisation to the humans of the next, it will tell of our fascination with Art, History and our fellow man.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a wondrous documentary about the spectacular Upper Palaeolithic art of the Chauvet Cave of southern France. In depicting some of the earliest and most pristine cave art yet discovered, Herzog's 3D film provides a visual experience which captures the contours of the cave walls which the original artists used in the creation of their images. The documentary also provides a glimpse into Chauvet which otherwise could not be gained, owing to the fact that the cave is virtually closed to all but a few researchers as a means to maintain environmental conditions which have preserved these images. The film's score as well as Herzog's use of silence provide a hauntingly beautiful backdrop to Chauvet's images, and while some of Herzog's commentary is at times peculiar, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a mesmerizing film which explores the beauty and creativity which lies at the root of our humanity (Klaus Ming August 2011).

. . . (we thought them, therefore they were), one would expect some startling revelations from a film entitled CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. While it's true that writer\director\narrator Werner Herzog digresses into irradiated albino alligators about 86 minutes into this 90-minute film, this seemingly drug-induced Non Sequitar says more about the state of HIS mind than it does about the FLINTSTONES'. Now, when "Chauvet Cave" was rediscovered 20 years ago in France, it would have been actual news IF the original explorers had found paintings of UFO's, or depictions of AK-47's, or blueprints for pyramids, or perhaps one of Shakepeare's sonnets plastered on its walls. Instead, the interior of this cavern (which had been sealed off by a rock slide for 10,000 years) contained about what you'd expect: crude graffiti scrawled by male chauvinist vandals, mildewed and smeared by 100 centuries of the sort of water damage plaguing homeowners with "wet" basements. Instead of hiring "art" restorers to salvage this as a potential tourist attraction (think Mammoth Cave or Carlsbad Caverns here in the U.S.), the French are planning to clone the hole and its decayed scribblings for a created-from-scratch theme park. Good luck with that! (Herzog SHOULD have made a movie about the dude briefly shown here who proves the tune to the STAR-SPANGLED BANNER was the world's first song: Maybe on the Seventh Day, God said, "Play Ball!")

Werner Herzog is given special permission by the French authorities to make a video record of the paintings on the walls of Grotto de Chauvet, the earliest of which were determined to be over 30,000 years old. What he makes is a documentary all right, but one about him and his crew making the documentary about the paintings - this is the key to appreciating this film, which would surely anger viewers expecting more hard info about the paintings and the site.I was enchanted by the labyrinthine passages of the cave and the way the paintings emerged out of the ancient and utter darkness cloaking them, even in 2D. The effect must have been really something in 3D. The sight of the light playing on the paintings with black all around touches some memory so distant and deep that it is irretrievable - yet there nonetheless. This is perhaps the source of the unnerving feeling mentioned by more than one of the experts and crew. I would venture to say that it is, indeed, what the film is really about.Herzog introduces us to and interviews experts involved in the study and preservation of the site, and treats them as veritable subjects alongside the paintings per se. They are a motley bunch, each one what used to be called "a character". I found myself thinking that, from now on, the paintings will depend on them and successors like them for their preservation and interpretation - so why not get to know them? Interviews aside, Herzog does all the talking. True, some of his comments are off the wall, but others are thought- provoking. That is Herzog.Most reviewers were put off or mystified by the ending, but it struck this one as apt. The incongruity of white albino crocodiles thriving in a place where they could never exist naturally dovetails nicely with that of Herzog hauling 21st-century cinematic equipment into a cave to meet people dead 30,000+ years ago. What would the artists have made of these intruders, who may have looked just as strange to them? Which of the two match-ups seems more remote or distant? And the area was ice-age cold then; who could tell how the climate would change 30,000 years from now, and due to what technology - or lack thereof? Thirty- thousand years constitute that much of a chasm. The crocs are there for these sorts of perspective.The spare, even austere, music makes fitting accompaniment. Too bad that Florian Fricke and Popul Vuh, who did many of the soundtracks for early Herzog flicks, are no longer with us - this one would have been right up their alley.Not Herzog's fault that there weren't more paintings to shoot, but the movie does go back over the same ones again and again (the final looks - provided sans narration - are the longest and best). But I, for one, never tired of seeing them. They are inspired in the sense of being spirit-works, and his unique movie shows that Herzog understood this very well.