Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is not the only recent film release that has probed the big questions and explored the wonders and mysteries of the natural world with a gloriously sincere, child-like awe and wonder. Werner Herzog’s astonishing, engrossing Cave of Forgotten Dreams has the same sort of existential curiosity as Life; the same operatic majesty. Both Malick and Herzog are explorers, philosophers, taking their cameras to the far reaches of the earth to create a cinematic meditation as interested in the science of the natural world as it is in the longings of the human heart.

Herzog’s Cave takes audiences inside the Chauvet cave in southern France, where in 1994, discoverers stumbled upon the earliest known prehistoric cave paintings. The cave, which had been sealed by a rockslide many thousands of years ago, had preserved a vast array of cave drawings (of horses, lions, bears, panthers, hyenas, etc.) painted by prehistoric man more than 30,000 years ago.

To cave is so historically significant that, in order to preserve its priceless relics, only a handful of humans (mostly scientists, archeologists, historians) are allowed to enter to the cave, and then only for a few hours at a time at a certain time of year. In other words, you and I will never be able to go inside. But thanks to Mr. Herzog, and the power of cinema to take audiences into forbidden, forgotten, unreachable places, we do get to take a look inside.

After receiving special permission from the French minister of culture, Herzog and a crew of three were allowed entrance to the cave to film the documentary, using custom-made 3D camera equipment and limited lighting. It’s a testament to Herzog’s artistry that, even with so many limitations (they could only enter the cave for a few hours at a time, and could never step off a metal walkway inside the cave), the film feels as grandiose and epic as an opera.

As in Herzog’s previous films like Encounters at the End of the World (2007), which explored the culture of scientists working in Antarctica, or Grizzly Man (2005), which observed the eccentric life of Timothy Treadwell amidst the grizzly bears of Alaska, Cave is preoccupied with the interplay between natural wonders and the humans who’ve dedicated their lives to exploring them and understanding them. Herzog’s films feature jaw-dropping natural imagery and documents of wonders that feel genuinely undiscovered, but sometimes his camera seems even more interested in the humans he encounters in the process of discovery. Like any documentary, Herzog’s Cave features talking head “experts.” But they’re more than talking heads. For Herzog, they are the subjects and stars of the film, embodying the mysteries and themes of the film as much as the cave paintings themselves.

Featuring his characteristically subjective, speculative voiceover, Herzog turns Cave into more than just a History Channel-funded documentary of one of earth’s most important historical sites. He uses the film to ask big questions about what makes a human human: Are these cave paintings representative of some transition in the development of the human soul, where man discovered art, representation, culture for the first time? What can we learn from these paintings about the nature of man and his relationship with the world around him, with God? What drives man’s curiosity about existence? What drives him to create art?

These questions arise on at least three levels in the film, as reflections of 1) the prehistoric humans who created the cave art, 2) the humans today who have devoted their lives to understanding things like history, and 3) Herzog himself, who finds himself compelled to make films like this, a sort of meta analysis of the human activity of culture.

In the end, Cave is more than just an document of a historical wonder. It’s a self-probing meditation on the very meaning of civilization, of culture, of creation. It takes us all the way back to the very beginning of culture, to help us understand just how glorious, unexpected and valuable is man’s facility for self-conscious reflection on himself and his world.

Late Harvest

natebell — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:39:03 -0800

Struggling to keep up with a busy fall, lagging a little behind as usual, the reviewer soldiers on…

An Education. Smooth piece of ‘60s nostalgia about an English schoolgirl who must choose between the steady, humdrum life her parents envision for her and the bohemian pleasures offered by an exciting but unscrupulous older man. What looks like a routine coming-of-age drama at first glance comes vividly to life under the judicious direction of Lone Scherfig (one of the original members of the Dogme 95 group, if anyone still remembers), who demonstrates an intense appreciation for what it feels like to be young and intelligent and restless and trapped. As the schoolgirl, the incandescent Carey Mulligan simulates a wide assortment of emotions with the ease of a seasoned professional.

Fantastic Mr. Fox. Wes Anderson comedy, family-safe but sophisticated enough to pass muster for all but the strictest cinephiles, about a domesticated fox who falls back on his animal instincts when his family is threatened by greedy farmers. Roald Dahl’s story proves an ideal opportunity for Anderson to spin yet another portrait of a youthful spirit struggling to accept responsible adulthood. The stop-motion techniques and autumnal English settings bring to mind Nick Park, and afford Anderson even more control over his constructed universe. None of it dampens the fun of the whole enterprise, or cheapens the emotion at its core.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans. Modestly budgeted Werner Herzog police thriller (you heard correctly) about a wild cop whose back pains lead him from Vicodin to cocaine while investigating a drug-related murder. Highlighted by an expertly cracked Nicolas Cage performance and a strange—and strangely lengthy—interlude involving hallucinatory iguanas, the film is as funny as Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant was anguished. Herzog treats the New Orleans environment as he would the jungles of Peru (with plenty of attention paid to local color), and even the smallest role is interestingly cast and played. Worth seeing as a novelty item, but the all-encompassing weirdness and sordidness of the project is finally taxing.

La Danse. Two-and-a-half hour high-def video documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet that observes many arduous rehearsals, performances, and the occasional financier meeting, all without recourse to backstage drama, narration, interviews, or even a helpful nameplate to identify the onscreen subject. Frederick Wiseman, legendary practitioner of the direct cinema, is the man at the helm, and he never imposes a point of view, so that the independent mind is allowed to wander where it likes, picking up stray details here and there, taking in the atmosphere, admiring the spectacle of bodies-in-motion. While it’s a far cry from the heated muckraking of Titicut Follies and Law and Order (Wiseman’s little-seen early masterpieces), the viewer is grateful for a piece of filmmaking that doesn’t cajole or bully—in other words, a documentary that is content to document.

The Road. Cormac McCarthy adaptation that wavers uncomfortably between brutality and sentimentality, about a father and son engaged in a long trek across an ashen wasteland—a less spectacular and more sobering vision of the apocalypse than the usual Hollywood fodder. John Hillcoat’s direction comes briefly to life during a hair-raising scene in the basement of a band of cannibals, but fails to disguise the story’s lumbering, episodic gait. Viggo Mortensen, looking like a skid row refugee in his soiled snow coat and grubby beard, rises to the role of father with utmost dedication.

Werner Herzog

Review: Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Late Harvest