Review: Werner Herzog's CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

rating: 4

(Rob's Berlin review re-posted as the film is released in the U.K. today) There is a long version and a short version of this review. The pithy one goes something like this: if you liked Encounters at the End of the World and Grizzly Man, you'll love Cave of Forgotten Dreams. That does the job and you know exactly what I mean: people who aren't Werner Herzog documentary fans won't care/get it/enjoy it whereas people who are will lap it up. But, seeing as it's hardly acceptable to turn that review in and call it a night, I'll fight the urge to go to sleep and give you the longer version too. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a documentary film about the Chauvet caves in Southern France which are home to the oldest and best preserved record of ancient human art, around 400 murals depicting bears, rhinos, lions and horses thought to be around 33,000 years old. Access to the historic site is strictly limited with even the scientists who work there under strict supervision, yet Herzog and a two man crew are given a special permission by the French government to spend a few hours in the cave (with a small custom-built camera and minimal light) in order to capture this amazing and profound record of a world we know little about. One which seems familiar to us yet completely alien. It is on this last point that Herzog focuses his oft-imitated and highly quotable blend of narration, as he explores the idea of the paintings as the titular "forgotten dreams". Something which is open to derision or accusations of pretension, but that I found fairly moving. Much has been made of the fact that this low-budget documentary about cave paintings is the German's first and apparently only planned foray into 3D. In fact I had been quite excited by the prospect of such a filmmaker using the format on such an atypical project. But instead it was another German, Wim Wenders whose Pina was screened on the same day at this year's festival, who delivered a compelling argument for the use of 3D by less conventional filmmakers. As I probably should have expected, Herzog's decision to use 3D seems motivated by his penchant for the absurd and his use of the technology is even vaguely sarcastic. It seems clear to me that the man who once pulled a steamboat over a mountain is again revelling in a self-imposed impossible challenge, perhaps as a reaction against the fact that he is forced to use amateur cameras for the expedition. It is entirely possible that he only considered making the film this way due to the fact that it wouldn't even have occurred to anyone else that it could be. "One small, inexpensive camera? I bet I can do a 3D film this way" I can imagine him saying to himself, as if for his own sense of pride and amusement. It's bonkers and brilliant, especially when he attaches a small RC helicopter to his camera in order to pull off a series of sweeping 3D aerial shots of a ravine, all on a micro budget. Yet even if he did decide to shoot the film this way, in the spirit of ingenuity rather than art, his officially stated reason for doing it also makes sense: that reason being that he wanted to be able to convey the way the paintings were wrapped around the contours of the cave walls. The result is something quite extraordinary as we are given our closest and most intimate look at a site we are almost certainly never going to be allowed to see first-hand. It wouldn't be a Herzog documentary though if he didn't find some slightly odd people to follow around, and thankfully he does. One of the scientists he talks to says he used to be in the circus. Another was formerly the head of the French perfume association before he turned to archaeology. He now uses his keen sense of smell when looking for caves - like a quirky oddball from a yet unfilmed Jeunet movie might. The maddest though is a historian who dresses up like an early man when showing Herzog some ancient sites, only to then begin playing 'Star Spangled Banner' on an early example of a flute - for next to no reason at all. It's these moments that give the documentary its character and play up to its director's unique sensibilities. The best bit is saved for last in the film's epilogue, which moves away from the caves and looks at a nearby biodome made possible by the channelling of super heated water which runs off a nuclear power plant. In it live a number of albino "mutant" crocodiles leading Herzog to conclude the documentary with musings on what they might make of the cave paintings (similar to his bit about aliens in Encounters). It's absolute genius and totally mad, delivered as if he's the sanest man alive (which he quite possibly is). I loved the whole thing, but then I'm a Herzog fan. If you liked My Best Fiend and La Soufriere, then you'll love this. Cave of Forgotten Dreams begins a limited run in U.K. cinema's from today.