Fascinating is an adjective overused in any form of criticism, it seems, however, to have been adopted into the discourse of film criticism with even more vehemence and enthusiasm than any other field.
'Astonishing' says the Times, 'fascinating' says the Guardian, 'must-see film of the year' says the daily mail are all too familiar log-lines on film posters all around the tube in London. Fascination: The state of being intensely interested or attracted. One cannot talk about the new Werner Herzog documentary without evoking this sense of fascination or this sense of being intensively attracted to its images.
Herzog takes his audience on a journey back in time, 32000 years back in time to be more precise, to the Chauvet cave in the south of France and its pre-historic gallery of paintings which bear witness to a time so completely estranged from ours that at times the film feels surreal and staged.
As soon as we leave the daylight behind, the mysticism of the cave starts to draw us in as Herzog's voice-over gently directs our thoughts back to early man in his/her (?) vision of the world. As such the pictures of animals are drawn with extreme care, some of them even have the signature of a hand print from a man with a crooked finger, a singled out individual speaking to us from the dawn of time. As Herzog furthermore points out, the fact that some of the animals are drawn with a double set of legs points to an almost pre-historic form of cinema as they would have seemed moving in the flickering lights of the torches, which is why most of these images would have been drawn in the darkness of the cave rather than the entrance filled with sunlight.
These and other moments in the film leave the audience in wonder and sheer amazement at a forgotten life which up until now, at least in my mind has only been linked to the first use of rudimentary tools and an animalistic fight for survival. Herzog manages to show the many facets of a society which clearly had an indication for the concept of culture, in that it linked the element of Art into something higher, abstract, even religious. The fascination I felt in seeing those images, however, somewhat diverged from Herzog's fascination with them. Ever the Romantic, Herzog interprets these images with the romantic concept of dreams and the images of the mind which serve as imprints of Nature, with a capital N. Thus Herzog presents us with a world-view in which mind imprints, or dreams merge with whatever reality surrounded early man, constituting a whole which as such manages to place man in sync with Nature and his surroundings through imagination. It sometimes seems as Herzog forcefully imposes his own romantic desires in this interpretation of the life of early man.
The fascination I felt in observing the dexterity and vitality of the images is perhaps of a baser nature. It is exactly the factor of life which remains so mysterious and ordinary at the same time. It is the fact that early man wasn't so much pre-historic as a-historic, as some of the images are painted within 5000 years of each other while still completely tying in with each other. This is what makes this documentary so compelling, the thought that man was at one point outside of history. This idea seems almost indecent to us modern beings whose doctrine of historic progress borders on the religious. Herzog, cleverly, weaves in images of the experts that accompany him. He leaves space for those shots in that the men he films stare at the camera, do so for a good 30 seconds, immobile and without any facial expressions. They are equipped with helmets and torches and should seem out of sync with their surrounding. Here lies the most surprising observation of the film, while the helmets and safety equipment clearly seem out of place, the human faces don't. They seem to belong in this mysterious realm of non-time. Beware, audience, this film will make you feel incredibly small, an unimaginable concept in our time of extreme individualism.
There is something strangely comforting in the idea that time does not necessarily move forward in a straight line as we imagine nowadays, but rather here, time seems like an infinite bubble, for lack of a better word. History does not exist. It soon becomes clear that History is humanly constructed, we impose it on time, as such, we appropriate it. Although this idea is not new to Herzog's films, see Heart of Glass, never has it been this clear and unimposing, rather an observation than an abstract message. The film itself, as such does not move forward as it loops back on itself, shots keep being repeated, even though Herzog loosely follows the order of the paintings in the caves.
In a typical Herzog manner, the Cave of forgotten dreams is much longer than your average documentary or feature film, but there is something strangely hypnotic about its rhythm. Instead of becoming impatient, one gets draw in by the timeless quality of the images and paintings, the calm and stillness of the cave, the eeriness of the silence only interrupted by the occasional sound of a drop of water falling to the ground. By the end of the film, one cannot help but wonder what it would be like to live outside the realm of history, in the peaceful space of non-time in which an individual 5000 years removed from your existence still understands your thoughts just by the mere fact of him/her also being human.
At the same time we realise that the difference is minimal in that 32000 years ago, Art was foremost used as a means of expression of the surrounding world whose mysterious quality turns into a thing of beauty. One cannot help but applaud Herzog for giving us back a small moment of the essential sense of what it means to be a human.
'Astonishing' says the Times, 'fascinating' says the Guardian, 'must-see film of the year' says the daily mail are all too familiar log-lines on film posters all around the tube in London. Fascination: The state of being intensely interested or attracted. One cannot talk about the new Werner Herzog documentary without evoking this sense of fascination or this sense of being intensively attracted to its images.
Herzog takes his audience on a journey back in time, 32000 years back in time to be more precise, to the Chauvet cave in the south of France and its pre-historic gallery of paintings which bear witness to a time so completely estranged from ours that at times the film feels surreal and staged.
As soon as we leave the daylight behind, the mysticism of the cave starts to draw us in as Herzog's voice-over gently directs our thoughts back to early man in his/her (?) vision of the world. As such the pictures of animals are drawn with extreme care, some of them even have the signature of a hand print from a man with a crooked finger, a singled out individual speaking to us from the dawn of time. As Herzog furthermore points out, the fact that some of the animals are drawn with a double set of legs points to an almost pre-historic form of cinema as they would have seemed moving in the flickering lights of the torches, which is why most of these images would have been drawn in the darkness of the cave rather than the entrance filled with sunlight.
These and other moments in the film leave the audience in wonder and sheer amazement at a forgotten life which up until now, at least in my mind has only been linked to the first use of rudimentary tools and an animalistic fight for survival. Herzog manages to show the many facets of a society which clearly had an indication for the concept of culture, in that it linked the element of Art into something higher, abstract, even religious. The fascination I felt in seeing those images, however, somewhat diverged from Herzog's fascination with them. Ever the Romantic, Herzog interprets these images with the romantic concept of dreams and the images of the mind which serve as imprints of Nature, with a capital N. Thus Herzog presents us with a world-view in which mind imprints, or dreams merge with whatever reality surrounded early man, constituting a whole which as such manages to place man in sync with Nature and his surroundings through imagination. It sometimes seems as Herzog forcefully imposes his own romantic desires in this interpretation of the life of early man.
The fascination I felt in observing the dexterity and vitality of the images is perhaps of a baser nature. It is exactly the factor of life which remains so mysterious and ordinary at the same time. It is the fact that early man wasn't so much pre-historic as a-historic, as some of the images are painted within 5000 years of each other while still completely tying in with each other. This is what makes this documentary so compelling, the thought that man was at one point outside of history. This idea seems almost indecent to us modern beings whose doctrine of historic progress borders on the religious. Herzog, cleverly, weaves in images of the experts that accompany him. He leaves space for those shots in that the men he films stare at the camera, do so for a good 30 seconds, immobile and without any facial expressions. They are equipped with helmets and torches and should seem out of sync with their surrounding. Here lies the most surprising observation of the film, while the helmets and safety equipment clearly seem out of place, the human faces don't. They seem to belong in this mysterious realm of non-time. Beware, audience, this film will make you feel incredibly small, an unimaginable concept in our time of extreme individualism.
There is something strangely comforting in the idea that time does not necessarily move forward in a straight line as we imagine nowadays, but rather here, time seems like an infinite bubble, for lack of a better word. History does not exist. It soon becomes clear that History is humanly constructed, we impose it on time, as such, we appropriate it. Although this idea is not new to Herzog's films, see Heart of Glass, never has it been this clear and unimposing, rather an observation than an abstract message. The film itself, as such does not move forward as it loops back on itself, shots keep being repeated, even though Herzog loosely follows the order of the paintings in the caves.
In a typical Herzog manner, the Cave of forgotten dreams is much longer than your average documentary or feature film, but there is something strangely hypnotic about its rhythm. Instead of becoming impatient, one gets draw in by the timeless quality of the images and paintings, the calm and stillness of the cave, the eeriness of the silence only interrupted by the occasional sound of a drop of water falling to the ground. By the end of the film, one cannot help but wonder what it would be like to live outside the realm of history, in the peaceful space of non-time in which an individual 5000 years removed from your existence still understands your thoughts just by the mere fact of him/her also being human.
At the same time we realise that the difference is minimal in that 32000 years ago, Art was foremost used as a means of expression of the surrounding world whose mysterious quality turns into a thing of beauty. One cannot help but applaud Herzog for giving us back a small moment of the essential sense of what it means to be a human.
