Shot in digital 3D, Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a fascinating inside look at a misplaced piece of human history.
Yes, that's right: Werner Herzog has made a 3D documentary about cave paintings. The paintings (and geological stories hinted at by the well-preserved cave interior) are a fascinating window backwards in time, reshaping notions of who homo sapiens were, what kind of leap forward we represented and what we were capable of even 25,000 years ago.
Drawn in charcoal on the rippling surface of the cave walls, with drawings conforming to the contours of projections and protrusions in the rock, they're a far cry from the stereotype of cave paintings as stick figures and crude hieroglyphics.
Discovered only in the past 10 years, the Chauvet caves in the south of France contain some of the earliest cave paintings -- and some of the most sophisticated. They've been preserved by the collapse of the rockface above the cave, closing off what had been the prime canvas for the prehistoric artists and the cave bears and other animals that either preceded or succeeded them.
Now highly restricted, to avoid causing erosion or deterioration, the caves were opened up to Herzog and a minimal crew for only a few hours. They are restricted to a metal pathway that's been erected to keep visitors from stepping where they're not supposed to.
Herzog used the vast cold emptiness as inspiration for poetic musings in Encounters at the End of the World, his documentary about the people who work in Antarctica; and was obviously fascinated by the insanity of Timothy Treadwell's adventures among the bears in Grizzly Man. But he can't quite express the wonder he apparently feels at the timeless quality of the art work and nature's handiwork in the cave.
As a result, the imagery in Cave of Forgotten Dreams grows repetitive, as Herzog uses his camera to glide across the surface of one of the paintings for the umpteenth time. Before long, you're wishing Herzog had been confined to the 42-minute time limit of an hour-long commercial TV presentation. Instead, it goes on for a long 90 minutes, easily 20 minutes or more too long for what Herzog has here.