Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.

Director:

Werner Herzog

Writer:

Werner Herzog

Stars:

Werner Herzog, Jean Clottes, Julien Monney

8 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
Werner Herzog	...	Himself / Narrator
Jean Clottes	...	Himself
Julien Monney	...	Himself
Jean-Michel Geneste	...	Himself
Michel Philippe	...	Himself
Gilles Tosello	...	Himself
Carole Fritz	...	Herself
Dominique Baffier	...	Herself
Valerie Feruglio	...	Herself
Nicholas Conard	...	Himself
Maria Malina	...	Herself
Wulf Hein	...	Himself
Maurice Maurin	...	Himself

Storyline

In 1994, a group of scientists discovered a cave in Southern France perfectly preserved for over 20,000 years and containing the earliest known human paintings. Knowing the cultural significance that the Chauvet Cave holds, the French government immediately cut-off all access to it, save a few archaeologists and paleontologists. But documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog, has been given limited access, and now we get to go inside examining beautiful artwork created by our ancient ancestors around 32,000 years ago. He asks questions to various historians and scientists about what these humans would have been like and trying to build a bridge from the past to the present.

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Plot Keywords:

cave | southern france | france | narrated by director | archaeology | 

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Genres:

Documentary | History

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Certificate:

G

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook [gb] Official site

Country:

Canada USA France Germany UK

Language:

English German French

Release Date:

31 August 2011 (France)

Also Known As:

La cueva de los sueños olvidados

Filming Locations:

Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche, France

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$139,101 (USA) (29 April 2011)

Gross:

$5,234,785 (USA) (19 August 2011)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Creative Differences, History Films, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min 95 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Werner Herzog: In a forbidden recess of the cave, there's a footprint of an eight-year-old boy next to the footprint of a wolf. Did a hungry wolf stalk the boy? Or did they walk together as friends? Or were their tracks made thousands of years apart? We'll never know.

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Connections

Referenced in Ode to the Dawn of Man (2011)

User Reviews

Vital subject, astonishingly beautiful images, hokey analysis

The photography of the cave is amazing. Everyone should go see this film for its images. Herzog makes some really extravagant claims about the cultural significance of these paintings, and he might be right. Since the cave is closed to everyone except a handful of scholars, this film probably represents our only chance to see inside of the cave.

There's a moment in the film where Herzog talks about German Romanticism, and it seems to me that the film comes from a perspective that is very much informed by ideas from that movement. His analysis is emotional and sweeping, and not terribly rigorous. If you dig Joseph Campbell, you'll love this.

Even as I write this, I know it's not fair, but I sometimes have a hard time with that mythic Teutonic longing for the past. It all seems to be bound up in a big ball, the ugly political elements and anti-semitism, the creepy mysticism of the Jungians, etc. Despite all of that, you have to give a guy like Wagner his due, because he created some astonishing things by going down that road. Herzog himself has made some amazing films, and maybe movies like Aguirre came about in part because Herzog went down that road. I love that film.

But German Romanticism didn't produce any cave paintings, the idea that ideas of the people who made the Chauvet cave paintings more than 30,000 years ago had anything to do with the ideas of the German Romanticists is extremely implausible. It's shoddy thinking.

But if you buy into the reading that Herzog gives these paintings, it's a lot more natural to think that Wagner's Rhinemaidens represent an authentic connection to a mythic past, that they aren't anachronistic constructions of a Romantic movement that was very much a product of the 19th and 20th centuries. And if you believe that those ideas from German Romanticism are, in a sense, eternal and out of time, you imbue them with an authority they don't deserve. And that authority is probably going to spill over on to some of the uglier aspects of the German Romanticist program.

Herzog is so important to Americans who love art house cinema that he's kind of a sacred cow. I feel the same way about him. But the stuff he says here about the albino crocodiles just doesn't make any sense. It's not even like it's wrong -- it literally doesn't make any sense. At some point we have to stand up and admit the emperor has no clothes.

I'm being contrarian here. There's a lot to love in this movie, and I do think that everyone should see it.

There are paintings in that cave that have the most amazing, perfect lines. I don't what the people who made them were like, or why they made the paintings, or how they learned their technique.

But they're definitely something to see.