On December 18th, 1994, a group of French cave-explorers made one of the most significant discoveries in the history of art and culture of mankind. Following a stray pocket of air, they stumbled upon a cave system, named the Chauvet Cave, cut off by a rockslide from prying eyes and unfavourable conditions for over 27,000 years, insulating and perfectly hiding a large number of Paleolithic cave paintings. These incredibly detailed red ochre and charcoal pictures, looking so fresh that their very existence was at first thought to be an elaborate hoax, are the oldest known artworks on the planet, and form the focus of eccentric German director Werner Herzog’s latest documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. That this idiosyncratic filmmaker should choose stone age paintings as his first foray into 3D is typically atypical of a documentarian who’s previously been filmed eating his own shoe.
The film is engrossing from the very beginning, with Herzog outlining the numerous steps that have been put in place to ensure the integrity of the cave’s internal environment. Having been given extremely rare access to Chauvet – the cave has never been open to the public, and is in fact only open to scientific researchers for a few hours per day, over a period of a few months per year – the film crew was limited to four people, carrying basic equipment and lighting that produced no excess heat. Not to mention only being allowed to film from a 2ft. wide walkway running the length of Chauvet, and dealing with the near-toxic levels of radon and CO2.
Despite these stringent conditions, Herzog has managed to capture one of the most beautiful films ever rendered in 3D, with the basic lighting and third dimension adding an elegant depth to the shots, as his digital camera captures every shaded line trailing into niches and nooks of the cave wall. Every stalactite and rippling calcite curtain sparkles with crystals, and the cave, a representation of timelessness itself, seems fragile, with the paintings taking on a near religious importance in the development of our, indeed all, culture.
The film is an evocative dissection of cave drawings as a form of proto-cinema, with Herzog making connections to such diverse contemporary reference points as Fred Astaire’s shadowy tap-dancing in the classic Bojangles of Harlem and the buxom babes of Baywatch. He even goes so far as to discuss Paleolithic music in an effort to score this idea of a prehistoric picture show. This all plays out against Ernst Reijseger’s ethereal music, lending Herzog’s mediations on the stretching of dreams across the chasm of 30,000 years a haunting and sad power.
No more is this sadness evident than when we see the handprint of one of the artists, whose designs are to be found across the cave, and can be easily identified by a curvature of his little finger. The clinical scientific methods used to examine the cave are laid bare, a sort of CSI: Caveman, but the science becomes fleshed out when we meet the researchers, each of whom is clearly so passionate about discovering as much as possible about the artists, in an effort to piece together some notion of their forgotten dreams.
This is a beautiful and rewarding film, but you will have to be willing to buy into Herzog’s auteur style, with long dragging shots without any commentary. And the irradiated albino crocodiles, to boot. But should you be willing to dream with him, this film will be something you’ll never forget.
4 Likes
No comments:
Post a Comment