Cave of Forgotten Dreams (U)
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Dwayne Johnson, Maggie Grace
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The Chauvet cave, discovered in 1994 in the Ardeche gorge, Southern France, is one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in the world.
Dating back about 35,000 years, its walls are covered with beautiful paintings of animals – horses, lions, panthers, rhinos, hyenas among them – which would be astonishing in themselves; what's more remarkable is that the collapse of a rock face thousands of years ago preserved this cavern art in near-perfect condition: the animals look like they might have been painted yesterday. Many film-makers have tried to gain access to the cave and all have been denied, bar one. Who else but that chronicler of outlandish human endeavour, Werner Herzog? With limited time, a skeleton crew and an improvised lighting system – the technical restrictions imposed on account of atmospheric fragility are severe – Herzog superbly conveys (in 3D) the mystery and the majesty of these paintings, no primitive daubs, incidentally, but meticulous and artful in a way that conjures some Paleolithic Picasso to mind. The spectacle is, in a very real sense, awesome. Of course, this being a Herzog documentary, narrated by the man himself in that otherwordly Teutonic voice, it has much to say on the nature of creation and the eternal struggle of mankind to understand. In the end he lets the camera tell the story in a long montage of these strange paintings, needlessly capped by a postscript in which he speculates – incomprehensibly – upon the perceptive capability of albino alligators at a tropical site 20 miles away. But not even albino alligators can hold a candle to those paintings.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments