Werner Herzog
Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary by Werner Herzog presented at the Toronto festival in 2010, is an award-winning film that perhaps went unnoticed by many despite its renowned director, probably due to the specificity of the theme but also for the slow pacing (I believe functional) that characterizes it.

It is filmed in southern France in a location of stunning beauty, Pont D'Arc (this place), located about halfway between Montpellier and Lyon, a valley with numerous natural caves including the Chauvet cave.

The cave is named after its discoverer, Jean-Marie Chauvet, who in the early 90s embarked on an exploration campaign in the area in search of caves inhabited during the Paleolithic era. The exploration proved fruitful, and after several caves that yielded various archaeological findings, the one containing the currently oldest known cave paintings, dating back to 36,000 years ago, was discovered. At that time, Europe was in the midst of the Ice Age, and Cro-Magnon man occupied its territories. The film states that, at the time of the cave's use, Neanderthals were still present in the Pont D'Arc area, a piece of information that, ten years later, I have been unable to verify, suggesting that science has already moved on.

After its discovery, the cave was resealed to prevent the issues that led to the deterioration of paintings in two other significant European caves (Altamura and Lascaux, now closed to the public) where artificial lighting and the heat produced by crowds of tourists initially visiting them altered the internal microclimate, promoting the growth of moss and lichens on the cave walls (and inevitably on the paintings).

Chauvet, while awaiting new and less invasive investigative technologies, is therefore opened very rarely and exclusively to allow scientists to study it.

During one of these rare openings, the French Ministry of Culture invited Werner Herzog to film the interior of the cave to produce a documentary.

The cave, although small with its 400 meters of linear development, offers a multitude of animal depictions that are hard to imagine in our era: mammoths, lions, rhinoceroses, horses, bison, bears, aurochs, deer, hyenas, wolves, leopards, owls, all of which once abundantly populated our lands.

The quality of the drawings and their nearly complete preservation is due to calcite deposits that covered the paintings like a veil. A massive landslide in a distant epoch closed the original entrance and was crucial in the process that favored their preservation, almost underscoring that not all evils come to harm. At least not in an absolutely temporal sense.

From the start, Herzog's sensitivity allows us to appreciate the artistic nature of the work, showcasing his expertise in the figurative arts and his talent as an enthralling storyteller.

Unlikely yet absolutely fitting parallels between Paleolithic figurative art, magical rituals, cinema, and artistic avant-garde movements are presented with great elegance.

Like in a Cubist painting, many animals on the walls are depicted with multiple legs, as if to simulate movement. The natural curves of the rock were skillfully used by the artists of the time to emphasize the softness of the animals' bodies in their moments of everyday life. Thus, not hunting scenes with humans as the banal protagonists, but lions resting as if unaware of the observers, horses neighing, rhinoceroses captured at the moment of horn clashes. But there's much, much more...

Herzog, as a first-person narrator, cannot escape the filming, just as the director of photography and a technician form, alongside the scholars, the cast of actors. (*)

The scientists, from the earliest moments of the film, are “looked at” affectionately as they head to the cave entrance, looking like children going to a park: feet in the mud, dirty speleologist suits, helmets on their heads, and backpacks on their shoulders. They joke and laugh, being aware of their privileged status. No vanity and no script to study, everything is spontaneous as one would expect from people usually far from the spotlight.

The passion and enthusiasm for what they analyze during the few days the cave is open shine through every moment under the “paternal eye” of the director. They are interviewed about their discoveries but are also asked questions about their private lives in relation to their profession. It is emblematic of the case of the archaeologist who used to be a circus juggler (was his perhaps a mystical vocation? It seems to suggest so). One feels the urge to hug the archaeologist who reconstructs prehistoric weapons, who, in the middle of a vineyard, throws a spear and rushes to retrieve it, unconcerned or temporally oblivious of his age, as he laughs at his own clumsiness.

Did Herzog himself plan for me to feel such strong empathy for these people? What is the power of cinema and how strong is it? And his music (Ernst Reijseger, here or here), how much does it influence? The film flows placidly like the work of the scholars; the patience they use in their work might prove to be the right key to interpreting the entire narrative.

One cannot remain indifferent to the unexpected ending; in the bitter reflection on the perception of what has been discovered, the surgical eye of the intellectual is revealed, looking with emotion yet at the same time strongly disillusioned with everything he has been able to observe on his own.

It is difficult these days to come to a definitive conclusion about anything, concentration is lacking, time has stretched, and honestly, I don't have many words left anymore. We live inside a bubble, in a situation similar to that described inside the Chauvet cave, attempting to stop time. Talking about this film always awakens many reflections in me about what we are, the fragility of our nature, the battles humanity has had to face to progress, now adding a new chapter to history. In the Chauvet cave, they were humans who could tell their humanity, with their means and emotions, and I wonder if we will be able to do the same in these challenging times. But I fear that narrating these days' flash mobs will not bring the same poetry as a cave painting. And my neighbor DJ & yelling on the balcony is my witness.

(*) The crew was seriously limited, forcing Herzog himself to hold the lights necessary for filming. These lights, consisting of minimal equipment, were assembled inside the cave itself (the dust is a constant to contend with) because, in this case, the entrance, but more generally very narrow passages, make the transport of any bulky object extremely complex, sometimes impossible. Touching the cave walls was also prohibited, and they moved restricted on a 60 cm wide walkway shown several times during filming. For those unfamiliar with the hypogean world, it is an extreme environment, where even simple photos are challenging due to the very high humidity and, of course, the complete absence of light.