Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D
By Beth Davies-Stofka
June 23, 2011 - 18:39
Studios: Creative Differences Productions, Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, ARTE
Writer(s): Werner Herzog
Starring: Werner Herzog
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Produced by: Erik Nelson, Adrienne Ciuffo
Running Time: 95 minutes
Release Date: April 29, 2011
Distributors: IFC Films
Genre: Documentary
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Imagine a wall in a cave. A cave bear, standing on her hind legs, stretches her forelegs high above her head. She flexes her lethal claws and sharpens them on the wall. She leaves deep, vertical white scratches.
Sometime later, an artist engraves a mammoth and a rhinoceros around the bear’s scratch marks. The engravings are eight feet off the ground.
Sometime later, new artists arrive, scraping the wall until it is white. The cave bear’s scratches, left thousands of years earlier, are nearly obliterated, the mammoth and rhinoceros as well. Only faint evidence remains, and then only to the most determined eye. These new artists paint five mammals.
Later, someone paints two rhinos below the white canvas. Are they fighting? Are these two males in battle, or a male and female mating? No one knows. But you can experience the event. You can hear the crack of horn striking horn. You can feel the violence of the moment.
New artists arrive, painting beautiful aurochs on the white canvas. Three bovine creatures with elegant horns all face the same direction. They appear to be easy-going. It seems odd that we can imagine their mood. They are over 32,000 years old.
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Finally the last artist arrives. While the others had been thoughtful and deliberate, carefully composing with the contours of the wall, this one is especially meticulous in approach. This artist adds four horses. Each of them is intimately related in family likeness, yet each is a unique individual. Each one, so expressive, is somehow less expressive than its neighbor. Vividly rendered and harmonious, one can see them arch their necks and hear them whinny. In your mind, they shake their heads with sudden expulsion of breath. Like the aurochs, they are in motion, moving toward something, or at least acknowledging something. There is no fear in their aspect.
The entire panel forms one of the most breathtaking and beautiful works of art in human history, the famous “Panel of the Horses” in Chauvet Cave. The artists used the contours of the cave wall and the play of light thrown by torches and fires to create contrast and motion. Their subjects are animated. They move, and they make noise. We hear the whinnying of the horses. We hear the crack of the rhino horns.
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The painting was completed around 32,000 years ago. Some 25,000 years ago, the rock face collapsed, sealing the cave until 1994 when three French explorers – Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet – discovered its long-hidden beauties, revealing an astonishing collection of art so fresh that at first look, everyone thought they were forgeries.
Werner Herzog’s documentary about the cave, its art, the artists, and the scientists studying it, is now in theaters. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encounter these stone-age masterworks in immersive 3D.
While the paintings are the central concern of the film, Herzog also explores the Paleolithic culture of the Alps, including sculpture and music. He gives a concise account of the scientific study of the caves, and interviews the scientists themselves. What emerges is a riveting speculation on the meaning of us, that is to say, human beings. The question of who we are, just like the question of who painted these lovely creatures and why, is a permanent mystery. We’ll never know. It’s incredibly enthralling.
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The film produces profound feelings of reverence. I don’t know if the reverence results from Herzog’s own often awed encounter with the paintings, or if the paintings themselves reach through the screen and evoke it on their own. I know they evoke many other feelings. For me, the most profound sensations were of loneliness and longing, an ancient yearning that seemed to possess me.
These are pictures of power. Herzog calls them “memories of dreams long forgotten.” We know they live, but we’re not sure how we know it. And it’s personal. I sat in the theater for a long time, pinned to my seat by waves of emotion. I looked into the faces of these ancient paintings and I didn’t know them. But they knew me. I feel I’ve finally come face-to-face with the lovers buried in the deepest parts of my soul, the gods that live in the depths of my own dreaming. I long to consummate the relationship, yet I cannot.
But I won’t give up.
Rating: 10/10
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