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Imagined dialogue between Werner Herzog and producers from the History Channel.

Suits: Look Werner, this is great stuff, this footage of the Chauvet Cave. But there is only a half hour of interesting stuff. What can you do for us. Make it into a feature.

Werner: Vell, look, already. The cave valls are not flat and so we could make this static shit into a 3D special. Move in and out, cast a few shadows, jerk the camera around so it seems that we are walking around.

Suits: Great! That should get people into it but how can you make it all longer? It has to be feature length.

Werner: Ach. Ve bring in der scientists. Anthros and Paleos. And non experts. Like I read about this cave sniffer, an aroma expert. He likes to sniff for clues.

Suits: That's the ticket. More talk.

Werner: We could show some shit from other nearby places like Austria, Australia, South Africa. Every culture has junk in their caves. Look at these venus statues. There aren't any things in this cave but we can say there might have been, or if there had been there would be venus statues.

Suits: Far fucking out. Little venus statues from all over. Tits and ass from antiquity. What else.

Werner: I can bring in some weapons and show how they killed horses and all. Some old fart who can't even throw but still he can talk his way out of anything. Even apologize for being lousy at it.

Suits: OK. The talk, the side stuff, but right now, it is all silent. Pictures of an empty cave. You can hear your heart beat.

Werner: An idea there. We will make it silent for once and then say to listen for your heart. When that doesn't work I can loop in a woompa woompa from stock audio. The other thing is to get some music.

Suits: Great, what kind of music do you "hear" here?

Werner: Vell, I vould say ve get sum really spooky shit. An organ moaning. A woooo woooo choir. Maybe a little violin over the top. Make it so intrusive people won't look at their watches.

Suits: OK Lets go with it.

And they did.

I challenge you not to yawn during this.

The film is half and hour of fascinating looks at an undiscovered cave with some astounding 30,000 year old pictures, some bones (no human) and a lot of stalagtites and the other ones with a c.

Then Werner Herzog narrates in his croony, sing song talking style.

He tries to dramatize it but it does not need dramatizing. Enough. There is a lot of irrelevant talk and footage and so on.

I did like seeing the paintings and hearing the story. There is one archeologist who used to be a monocyclist in a circus. Long hair, cheekbones beyond belief and a crazy mouth. They brought him on every fifteen minutes. If women responded half as well to him as I did then they would hang out just to see him again. He was also about the only interesting one in the bunch.

I finally FF'd my way to the protracted end.

A 2 out of Netflix5.

Remind me that Werner Herzog is a much better director of dramatic screen fiction, although kinda weird and bent, than he is a documentarian. I got burnt once before in another forgettable film.

I realized this too late.

3-D. Really? Gotta admit I wasn't there for that but I cannot imagine it offers anything except maybe a little dizziness from the in and out and around the corner of the cave.

Oh. The film. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011).

The Eberts liked it.

Labels: films