Lack of good storyline.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

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).

Werner Herzog, director of stunning documentaries such as Grizzly Man or Encounters at the End of the World but also movies like Rescue Dawn, gains access to the Chauvet Cave, a cave located in France that was discovered in 1994 and since then has been closed with only a restricted group of top scientists having access to it once a year: since it holds 32000 years old paintings created by Paleolithic humans inside, which are by far the oldest ever known. Herzog captures the paintings beautifully while interviewing local scientists ,archaeologists and other characters to help us understand the story of its cave: the paintings creators, when were they exactly painted and what kind of animals inhabited the cave through this millenia span... Herzog tries to, through these paintings, create a time capsule that leads the audience to an imaginary world lost in the past that, inevitably, the man from the 21st century cannot understand. A brilliant soundtrack composed by Ernst Reijseger helps the mood as we see through this fascinating cave, with Werner Herzog's personal touch and taste on the side. Visit thefadingcam blog for more!

Perhaps this was intended as a Monty Python flavored mocumentary of some particularly pompous and solemn History Channel product. If it is, Werner has succeeded brilliantly. It's hilariously Dickensian in its portrayals of slightly loony characters and in throwing around jumbled theses in response to the Really Big Questions: Who are we? What is art? What is that awful music in the background? Will mutated white alligators some day make mocumentaries about us? Herzog and his cast of zanies play around with these gas-filled profundities, while we wait impatiently for some clear, well-lighted shots of those quietly beautiful sketches by our ancestors or some more earnestly scientific speculation on means, motives,and methods of the ancient artists. Instead we keep getting Gallic stereotypes like the sniffy matron d'cave guide who scolds the crew, reminding them not to step off the gangplank because their stupid boots will tramp out the 10,000 year-old footprints of a cave bear and then pauses to insist (rather too eagerly)that an indecipherable lump of rock shows a minotaur or something molesting the lower part of a woman's...well, you get the picture: the world's oldest cave porn. Then there is the paleo-reenactor who demonstrates the art of operating an atl-atl spear-sling, apparently attempting to fatally impale a grape arbor. Or do you prefer the archivist who shows us his collection of pendulous paleo-Venus carvings. One in particular he seems exceptionally fond of, not enough to marry perhaps, but at some point one expects he's about to say, "Could you all just please leave my lab now? We want to be alone." Eat you heart out Mel Brooks. Don't even get me started on the nice old guy who informs us he was once the Master of All French Perfumers or some such and who now wanders the wilds so he can sniff his way into promising holes in the ground, where he asks others to join him in smelling the essences of our deodorant-innocent ancestors. At one point he seems to get quite confused, staring into the camera as if to ask, "Am I ready for my close up now, Mr. Herzog?" All this is great for evoking chortles, of course, but there is such beauty in these caves (look at the haunting portrayal of the four expressive, individualized horses, for instance)that one wishes a more down-to-earth (pun intended),less artsy director had made a documentary on the subject.