Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Directed and narrated by Werner Herzog
Part of: Viennale (Surprise Movie)

Plot:
Herzog got permission to enter the Chauvet Cave in France together with a film team to document the oldest discovered cave drawings in the world. He decided to do so in 3D.

I kinda thought that this film would be a lot cooler than it was. The 3D didn’t work very well. Most likely because Herzog’s sanctimonious narration made me roll my eyes so hard.

The cave itself is a thing of beauty and greatness. That’s why I would have wished to look more at my leisure, get more details. Since everybody looks at a different speed, it is hard to cover that for everyone in a film. And since the circumstances for filming didn’t make things easier, I’m quite willing to forgive that.

But what I don’t understand is that even though they talk a lot about how these drawings would have looked in fire, they never tried to recreate the effect. [I’m not saying that they should have lit a fire in that cave, I’m thinking animation.] And the 3D was a bit jarring sometimes (when they show the laser point animation, for example, and in the end there is a shot where somebody takes the camera off the cameraman and it felt like my eyes would start bleeding).

But the worst thing of all is Herzog’s text. Holy shit, how that man can ramble. And he said so much bullshit. As if the wonder of the cave wasn’t enough, he had to make it more dramatic.

Which leads to an epilogue at a crocodile farm not far from the cave that is heated by the cooling water from a near-by nuclear reactor. Apparently there are very many albino crocodiles at that farm and he waxes on and on about some thing or another. While all I could think about during that scene was that that was basically the perfect set-up for a superhero movie. The absurdity was amazing.

Summarising: Yeah, it’s nice to get to see the cave that way (since it’s closed to the public), but other than that… meh.