I can imagine the History Channel approaching Werner Herzog to make a documentary on Chauvet Cave. In my mind, they ask if he would make an informative but cinematic documentary with lots of talking heads because they have very successful shows like “Modern Marvels.”
But of course Herzog has no interest in making such a film, and instead he makes “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” a film with beauty and philosophical ambitions that far surpass those of the scientists who discovered, studied and preserved this cave dating back to the dawn of man.
Inside Chauvet Cave in Southern France, 32,000-year-old cave paintings are pristinely preserved because of a rockslide sealing everything. To the scientists, these drawings are not merely rough sketches but carefully constructed works of art and the oldest of their kind. They’ve proven some are done by the same artist and that years later other painters aimed to model this work in the same cave.
Images of horses are sketched with eight legs to suggest movement. Herzog sees it as a form of early proto-cinema, as he naturally would. Other drawings are the first ever depictions of the human body. One scientist even discovered a rudimentary flute dating back to the Stone Age. It’s sophisticated enough to play The Star Spangled Banner.
This could be a very dry film. Herzog evokes its painterly beauty, stillness and elegance because this is exactly how wondrous he feels the paintings are. And the completed “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is a film only he could’ve made.
In one scene, a scientist explains how he uses digital laser technology to get an internal map of the entire cave inch for inch. This is History Channel gold, but here’s how Herzog baffles the scientist: “How can we use this to rebuild the hopes and dreams of these people?”
This is how deep Herzog wants to get with his film. He would have no interest in making it if he did not. He feels a look at these paintings could unlock a time capsule into understanding the intentions of people that lived millennia ago. He wonders if natural landscapes can embody our souls and minds. He speculates these images could reveal the precise birth of the human soul.
When did this documentary become “The Tree of Life?” Herzog’s ambitions are equivalent to Terrence Malick’s, and it’s a wonderfully expansive film.
“Cave of Forgotten Dreams” was photographed in 3-D, and you could even make a documentary about how Herzog’s four man team, including himself, lugged a 3-D rig into these cramped spaces. The 3-D is Herzog’s way of making the rolling cave walls come alive with shape and movement. I saw it in 2-D, and Herzog’s long segments slowly panning across cave walls lost some of their zeal. But that does not make “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” any less magnificent.
3 ½ stars