Cave of Forgotten Dreams [DVD]

When a group of caving enthusiasts broke through a rockfall into a long-buried complex in 1994, they unexpectedly stumbled on a collection of cave paintings over 30,000 years old which had been preserved against time by their isolation.

The caves remain secret and for the most part sealed; open for only a few days a year to a small number of researchers in order to prevent damage to the paintings, which could be harmed even by a rise in atmospheric CO2 from human breath. However, after years of trying, Werner Herzog was allowed to take a camera crew into the caves for those few days to capture this frankly amazing 3D documentary.

The walls of the caverns are decorated with horses and rhino which look as if they could have been painted last week, and scattered amongst them are smaller, more personal momentoes - someone, tens of thousands of years ago, left his handprint in ochre on the walls throughout the complex, and in the corner of one cave the footprints of a child and a wolf cross the floor together. It's these human reminders in amongst the archeology and geology which Herzog uses to try and cross the vast gulf of time between us and the artists to try to understand who the people were who made the pictures. What did they think or believe the pictures were for? Art alone, or in some way ritualistic? What purpose did the caves serve for these people? Who were they? Were they like us?

The documentary ranges widely through archaeology, prehistorians and geology to try and develop an answer to the questions, but at the end of the day time separates people from each other as much as distance and the people who created the art remain as unknowable to us as if they were on Mars. What we are left with is glimpses of who they might have been and questions as much about who we are, and were we fit into the world, as about them.

Questions you'll find yourself pondering as you watch the silent image of an ancient horse, dancing in the torchlight through an archway of stone.

As much an experience as a film. Remarkable.

********CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS********

Werner Herzog was a very privileged man indeed to gain access to the Chauvet cave in France's Ardeche region. Lascaux cave, once known as the Sistene Chapel of prehistoric cave painting has now been superceded by Chauvet, which was discovered by three fortunates only in 1994. This remarkable cave was fortunately covered by a landslide thousands of years ago which preserved the cave art, in some cases as if it were only done yesterday. These beautiful paintings give us a real link to our Paleolithic ancestors of 30,000 plus years ago. That is incredibly just how old some of these paintings are. Far older than anything previously discovered. The cave is still scattered with the bones of long extinct species like the cave bear and cave lion. Some of the paintings are breathtakingly beautiful with a fluidity of movement that any great artist would be proud of. Perhaps the centrepiece is a jaw dropping collection of horses one above the other, with two woolly rhinoceros engaged in a fight below them which beggars belief. Some of these ancient artists working with primitive tools created wonderful art. They were the Leonardo's of their distant time! Some ingeniously used the natural contours of the rock to give more realism to their pictures. These people had to literally get inside an animals head to track and kill them successfully, an art that has been lost in modern times with the demise of the last bushmen of the Kalahari and the native aboriginals of Australia. It is only with that knowledge that an individual could create such paintings. The dying bull at the Altamira cave in Spain is perhaps the greatest example of this.

Werner Herzog is able to capture this lost world amongst the shadows of the cave. The three discoverers must have felt like Howard Carter stepping into Tutankhamun's tomb for the first time, such is the magnitude of their find. In truth Herzog has little to do other than film this great art work and tangible link to prehistory with the right equipment and sensitivity to make it a success. The great filmmaker, who is experienced in documentaries succeeds emphatically. If you doubt his documentary film ability then watch his remarkable "Fata Morgana" and the more recent "Encounters at the end of the World". He quite rightly dwells on the paintings themselves, which is as it should be. He then tries to cast light on the nature of the painters, which is so difficult as the time span is so vast. Much is left to calculated guesswork. We watch an elderly scientist trying to recreate hunting techniques in a vineyard, who is quick to admit that he does not have the hunting skills built up over a lifetime that his ancestors would no doubt have acquired. What we do know is that they lived in close harmony with nature as a matter of necessity, and that they also had great artists amongst their number. Their very different world was a much colder place still in the throes of the ice age, but with a much vaster bio-diversity, as this fascinating film informs us. Perhaps Herzog would have been better to have left the strange albino crocodiles out in his closing scenes, but you must judge that for yourselves. Much as I would love to have the opportunity to visit Chauvet, that will thankfully not be possible. The French government, unwilling to repeat the mistakes of Lascaux where access by the public caused damage to a priceless piece of our history, sealed Chauvet off immediately to all but a few dedicated scientists who are still working tirelessly on unravelling the caves secrets. Plans are already afoot to build a replica cave for public access. Not quite like the real thing, but the next best! This is perhaps the finest documentary I can recall watching. My own interest in cave art makes me admittedly biased, but to anyone curious about mans past, or just a damn good documentary then watch this. There is a documentary where Herzog answers questions before a live audience who have just watched his film, that is worth catching in the extras.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, and you may too, but I find the almost-universal five-star reviews surprising.

Firstly the Good. Herzog is a quizzical, unhurried guide who takes us right into the experience of actually entering and exploring the cave, just as much as he takes us to the stunning cave art itself. There is an attempt to put the art in some sort of context by interviewing experts who have studied the art or who have deeper experience of the prehistory surrounding it. Herzog's interviewing technique (if it can be called such a thing) is wonderfully unexpected. Having taken us deep into the cave and given us a remarkable sense of the physical environment, Herzog goes back to each panel in careful detail. The final section films these anonymous masterpieces in 3D and in shifting light to give an absolutely uncanny sense of being there. As far as the art itself is concerned, it would be impossible to imagine it better filmed. The glacial pace of the story telling is, in this context, really welcome. You have the opportunity to truly experience and absorb the paintings in a manner that we rarely experience on film.

Now for the Bad! I have already mentioned the glacial pace of the film and I would imagine that some viewers will find it unbearably slow. I find the music dismal when it isn't positively irritating and I turned the sound off so that I could actually enjoy looking at the cave art. I also think that there are numerous missed opportunities to place the art in the context of the lives of our ancestors. Admittedly, we are still dependent on a great deal of speculation but, even so, there is so much more that could have been added. I was also baffled as to why the original discoverers were not interviewed. Why were they searching here? What did they expect to find? Surely their personal account of first entering the cave would have been worth having?

As for the Quirky: I'm a fan of many of Herzog's films but the jokey musing on the future judgments to be made by mutant albino crocodiles(!) added nothing to the experience of seeing the rock art.

So, all in all, as a chance to see the oldest prehistoric cave art ever found; this is as close as you and I are going to get (the cave is heavily protected and will never be opened to the public) and the quality of the filming is breathtaking. However, as a chance to truly understand the context and history of our prehistoric culture, this is a sorely missed opportunity. It's well worth seeing if you're at all interested but there's a much more engaging and informative documentary to be made out of this.