Originally published on Panic Dots.
It may come as a surprise that I can be a bit of a cynical git (quiet, there at the back), but this renaissance of 3D films has left me feeling somewhat cold and indifferent. It’s just another way for huge studios to make even more money from films that just don’t cut it. Who needs a plot when you’ve got knives flying out of the screen towards your face? Your FACE. That is, until I had the pleasure of seeing Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, the latest documentary from legendary film maker Werner Herzog.
In 2010, Herzog and his crew were given access to the Chauvet caves in the south of France. Now, those of you who didn’t just click the link may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, the Chauvet caves happen to be filled with the oldest cave paintings known to mankind. Some of them date back as far as 32,000 years, making the Pyramids look like the Eiffel Tower in comparison, time-wise.
The crew was given a meagre two months to shoot, and strict guidelines so as not to compromise the condition of the paintings. They were not allowed to set foot on the floor in case they disturbed any of the dust, or artefacts, that may be lying on the cave floor, so they had to negotiate the whole shoot on walkways barely a meter wide. Herzog has never really been one to adhere to the rules of documentary film making, so it will come as no surprise that he took all of the limitations in his stride – this isn’t a film intent on capturing the perfect shot (in fact, most of the shots have members of the crew clearly visible due to space restrictions), this is a film intent on documenting a period of our species’ history that very little is known about.
The shots that aren’t interrupted by a sound-man weighed down with equipment are absolutely breathtaking. The caves don’t appear to be have been used for habitation (except for the odd bear, or passing cougar), but were utilised in the Palaeolithic period as a crude form of art space. There are hundreds of paintings spread out over the cave of horses, cattle, lions, panthers, bears (oh my!), rhino and hyena. What beggars belief is that the people who created these pictures have utilised the curvature of the cave to give the impression of depth and movement. Watching in 3D makes this all the more effective – you can practically see the musculature under the hides of the animals, rippling in motion as they stampede across the walls. I can’t imagine this to be as effective in standard 2D. When Herzog settles on a decent shot, he allows the camera to linger there motionless, letting the audience drink it all in, only the sounds of the cave and the pulse in their ears as soundtrack, creating an effect that is the closest I’ve come to a religious experience. 3D was made for films like this.
It’s hard to not contemplate your own mortality when faced with a film like this. This cave, and it’s paintings, pre-date all known history. Some of the paintings in the cave were painted 10,000 years apart, meaning that more than one stage of civilisation had access to the caves. When you’re surrounded by towers of glass and steel, and a culture of manufactured obsolescence, it makes you wonder what we’ll be leaving for people to find in another 32,000 years (the Statue of Liberty discarded on a beach, clutching an iPod perhaps?).
Unsurprisingly, due to the delicate nature of the caves, very few people are allowed to set foot inside, so this documentary is probably the only chance you’re going to get to see these paintings up close, and in 3D. Herzog and his director of photography, Peter Zeitlinger, even had to radically adapt the cameras they were given to ensure they could make the documentary. Even if the only other films that get released in 3D after Cave Of Forgotten Dreams are soulless franchise movies, I will sleep better in my bed knowing that this documentary exists, and that it would have been nowhere near as effective had a megalomaniacal director not woken up one day and decided that the world just had to see a bunch of blue, scantily clad aliens jumping around trying to protect a giant tree.