If Werner Herzog isn’t careful, he may entirely reinvent himself as a documentarian, leaving even his considerable narrative work in the rear-view mirror (though to us, he'll always be the man who refused to stop an interview because of the minor inconvenience of being shot). In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the director takes his most inert subject yet (a series of cave paintings discovered in France) and turns it into a frequently moving meditation on art, humanity, and impermanence. His eye is that of a documentarian, but his spirit is that of an inquiring poet, determined to realize the full implications of even the most minor physical detail.
Set into a limestone cliff in the south of France, Chauvet cave contains the oldest cave paintings on record, dating back 32,000 years (reasonable proof of their authenticity is delivered early on), in addition to other notable findings. Because it was sealed away from oxygen and other elements for so long, everything inside the cave is remarkably well-preserved, making the site one of the more valuable finds of the period in all of continental Europe. As such, it is not open to the general public, and any entrants need the permission of the ministry of culture; of those permitted, they are required to limit the amount that they carry with them.
Herzog went into the cave with only four crew members: himself, an assistant, cameraman Peter Zeitlinger, and a sound recorder. Along the way are a number of other scientists and academics, including an art historian and several experts on the Paleolithic era, from which the paintings originate. Herzog spends a great deal of Cave detailing their operations, and showing off the high tech equipment that they get to use; one of the film's most striking visuals is of a three-dimensional map of the cave, illustrated in tiny white points. The science that went into creating it is not glossed over, but seen outside of purely technical terms, it evokes a newly discovered galaxy, no less grandiose or impressive than any of NASA's deep space photography.
Herzog was surely aware of the parallel, and it is impressions like these (as opposed to observations) that distinguish Cave as a piece of work. The director narrates the film himself, giving the potentially dry proceedings a personalized feeling that documentaries with this kind of subject matter usually don't and suggesting that he has genuinely absorbed all of this information and has interpreted it for you rather than simply passing it on. This is most clear when he discusses the subject matter of the paintings and the way that they were drawn; common subjects include woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and cave bears, which were also known to occupy the cave.
Conspicuously missing, however, are any of the proto-human inhabitants who presumably created any of these paintings; the closest is a figure with a human body and the head of a lion. Herzog muses at length about the significance of this, and what information we can glean about their culture from it. Some of it lapses into the sentimental (Herzog asks one of his subjects whether they cried at night), but it is always from the perspective of one trying to create a full portrait from only the smallest available remnants.
A note on the 3D: Cave of Forgotten Dreams is presented in a dual 2D/3D format, compatible with non-3D Blu-ray players. While 3D is obviously the optimal way to view the film (even if the process itself had something of a learning curve; Herzog had never made a 3D film before, and all of it was added in postproduction), it is just as enjoyable in 2D, though it appears that the dual format may yet require a bit of tinkering. While fine in close-ups, some of the wider, more panoramic shots were fuzzier, and a little smeared. This may have been the result of a defective disk (I also experienced some sound issues), but you might want to test it out before you make a purchase. With Cave though, it's well worth a little elbow grease.
SPECIAL FEATURES
There is a trailer and well as a short film of Herzog's Ode to the Dawn of Man.
"Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is on sale November 29, 2011 and is rated G. Documentary. Written and directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Werner Herzog.
