Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Director: Werner Herzog

After a lifetime spent travelling the world and capturing many of its most remarkable sights – from Antarctic volcanoes to the burning oil-fields of Kuwait to the face of Klaus Kinski – one might reckon that nothing could possibly reduce Werner Herzog to awe-struck silence. But the 68-year-old German writer/director clearly retains his capacity for wonder, as evidenced by his latest documentary: Cave of Forgotten Dreams, in which we join Herzog as he comes into close proximity with what are believed to be the oldest surviving examples of human artwork.

The Chauvet cave-system in the Ardèche region of south-central France was penetrated in 1994, and was found to contain cave-paintings dating back at least 27,000 – and perhaps up to 32,000 – years. These Paleolithic daubs include dozens of sketches – mainly of animals (including horses, bears and panthers), but including some human-like forms and more abstract images – which researchers believe may have been intended for ritual purposes.

Access to the Chauvet caves is very strictly controlled, but such is Herzog’s eminence as a documentarian – he was Oscar-nominated for 2007’s superb Encounters at the End of the World, and was previously responsible for the likes of Grizzly Man (2005), My Best Fiend (1999) and Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) – that he was allowed to make a small handful of hour-long visits, accompanied by a minimal crew. The resulting film is a first for Herzog – it’s in 3-D.

As he told the Los Angeles Times, “Once you see the cave with your own eyes, you realize it had to be filmed in 3-D,” Herzog says. “I’ve never used the process in the 58 films I made before and I have no plans to do it ever again, but it was important to capture the intentions of the painters. Once you saw the crazy niches and bulges and rock pendants in the walls, it was obvious it had to be in 3-D.”

Up until now almost exclusively the preserve of mainstream multiplex fare, 3-D is now popping up in arthouses in association with some very august names. Herzog’s fellow avatar of the New German Cinema, Wim Wenders, has also shot his latest documentary in the stereoscopic format – Pina, on the late choreographer Pina Bausch and her company, is set for UK distribution from April 22. And Martin Scorsese’s Christmas release Hugo Cabret is likewise intended to be seen through the special glasses.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams certainly makes imaginative and original use of the technology – as Herzog notes, all those “bulges and rock pendants” take on extra texture and tactility when seen in three dimensions. They have an enticingly detailed, organic integrity receding from view within the image that’s a world away from the cardboard cut-out planes and in-your-face projectiles that often mar Hollywood’s more galumphing attempts at 3-D effects.

But if the movie works just fine as a ruminative travelogue and is invaluable as an art-history/anthropology document, it’s ultimately a disappointment after the superb recent run of Herzog releases – Encounters, plus the delightfully berserk fiction-features Bad Lieutenant and My Son My Son What Have Ye Done (not to mention his Fitzcarraldo diary Conquest of the Useless, belatedly translated into English in 2009.) Because while those pictures could only have been made by Herzog, much of Cave is – perhaps because of the particularly restrictive circumstances of its production – straightforward stuff, stylistically speaking, operating within the standard confines of the History Channel (which part-financed it).

There are a few sequences in which Herzog’s trademark quizzically offbeat authorial voice is heard – sometimes via his own narration – and he manages to track down several fellow eccentrics in and around the cave who provide welcome moments of humour. There’s also a delightful segment right at the end involving albino crocodiles residing in the arboretum of a nearby nuclear power-plant – objectively a non-sequitur, but priceless as an example of Herzog’s ability to explore arcane but fruitful philosophical tangents. Elsewhere there’s the sense of a mercurial maverick on his best behaviour, slightly cowed in the presence of such a uniquely enduring example of human ingenuity and self-expression.

Neil Young
15th March 2011
written for the 23rd March edition of Tribune magazine