Culturebox: Herzog Comin' at Ya

Now playing: Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V at www.slatev.com.
movies Herzog Comin' at Ya Cave of Forgotten Dreams may be the best 3-D movie ever made. By Daniel Engber Posted Thursday, April 28, 2011, at 6:39 AM ET My first revelation while watching Cave of Forgotten Dreams (IFC Films), Werner Herzog's three-dimensional documentary about 30,000-year-old paintings, seemed face-palm silly a moment later: Our caveman ancestors really knew how to draw. Well of course they did. Prehistoric man wasn't skipping through the glacial landscape and scrawling on rocks like a child. He was an adult, just like you and me--and had an adult's capacity for graceful lines and shading. With a bit of homo savvy, he even appears to have figured out how to depict motion in his art. The film shows us, at one point, an eight-legged bison painted on limestone, as if the animal were posed in sequential frames of action. A sort of "proto-cinema," Herzog calls it. Herzog is right that the setting for his film--the magnificent Chauvet cave in southern France--feels like an ancient movie theater. The paintings are situated in a dark chamber draped with calcite curtains and lit up with flickering beams from the camera crew. Framed by stalagmites, the caveman drawings seem as if they're being projected onto the walls via flashlight. (Some are overlaid on even more ancient marks--the four-lined scratches of cave bears.) After spending 90 minutes in this environment, minus some time for talking-head interviews and the obligatory epilogue about albino crocodiles, I re-emerged into the sunlight a little shaken. And quite moved: Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a Herzogian masterpiece--a ponderous and nauseating theme-park ride, but one that unfolds as a probing essay on the history of art. To continue reading, click here. Daniel Engber is a senior editor at Slate. He can be reached at danengber@yahoo.com. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate What Will the Birthers Do Now? Don't Worry--They'll Think of Something. The Political Cliche at the Heart of Parks and Recreation Suspected Terrorist? You Can Still Buy a Gun in the U.S.	Advertisement
Manage your newsletters subscription: Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend | Advertising Information
Ideas on how to make something better? Send an e-mail to slatenewsletter@nl.slate.com. Copyright 2011 The Slate Group | Privacy Policy The Slate Group | c/o E-mail Customer Care | 1350 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 410 | Washington, D.C. 20036