Undescribable Perfection

Purely Joyful Movie!

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

throughout this film I noted many blatant lies that simply display the truth behind the entirety of the program.These paintings are clearly not from the paleolithic age and when the guy started whistling with a so called flute stuck into the corner of his mouth (watch it again it is clearly whistling). I could not contain myself and had to stop watching what I can only conclude is a farce that is stealing credit from more reliable art works (Probably for Money).If you are of the belief that these are in fact real. I can only say that you are free to your opinion. If there is any evidence to prove me wrong I would love to see it. I myself believe the entire thing to be a counterfeit.

yep, it's a long title but that's what i'm hoping someone is doing since it is mentioned in the documentary that this will likely be the only time a film crew is granted such extensive access to the Chauvet caves of Southern France, home of some of the most striking art ever produced by mankind in any era, let alone from some 32,000 years ago ... so i hope they are actively making copies of the most pristine print they have of this film so it is not lost as even tho the cave caretakers go to great lengths to preserve the site, even this will likely not be enough considering our clumsiness as a species ... and occasionally the earth's rambunctious nature with flooding, earthquakes, etc ... i imagine these are unlikely but still, one never knows and as this is our only film record, or the only major filming effort, we need to doubly-ensure that we save this piece of history ...i've heard and read a bit about these caves on and off thru the years but never have been a great student of them ... this film tho really lights one's fire to find out more ... from just the simple beauty of these drawings/paintings to the use of staggered positions over one pivot point of a part, namely a head and tusk of a rhino and legs of horses, so that when firelight is used on them, they provide a type of animation or motion to the drawing ...this animation aspect was a new fact to me and blew me away ... i can imagine sitting in that cave with fire as the only light and no doubt it would look like this, especially to the early humans sitting there never having seen what we take for granted and have seen all our lives (who hasn't grown up watching Bugs Bunny? i'd imagine a decided minority of kids born from 1960 to 1980 have not enjoyed the Loony Tunes throughout their childhood -- and even longer) ... think of sitting in a room with a fireplace as the only light and the dancing of the shadows and the 'movement' of various stationary articles around the room (lamps, chair backs, etc) as the light and shadow dance and flick and flit with and around each other ... add a bit of natural hallucinogen in a ceremonial setting and you'll have some staggering animation going on in that cave ...there is some debate about the 'flute playing' and whether or not he is 'adding notes' by whistling ... well just as a trumpet player doesn't simply use the basic notes available to him via the valves and pressing or releasing or combining the stops, a trumpeter also uses a variety of tightness in his lips position to add more notes ... it is no different with this type of flute and the positioning of the lips ... it is not 'whistling' but simply a difference in the stream of air, speed, concentration of the stream, etc, one uses to increase the number of notes used ... even as he was playing melodies before demonstrating the 'star spangled banner' short section, i recognized it as a a part of the pentatonic scale i often use when playing guitar ... but you don't get it with the five or six holes he had on the flute (i don't remember which number it was right off hand), but you get it with a bit of difference in your lip position ... simple as that anyway, i highly recommend this film ... i'd think it would be excellent for a senior science class and even for an art class ... someone mentions the closeness to some of Piccaso's work even ... and the Minotaur drawing, first fully shown here as no one has even walked into the area where it is hanging (drawn on a stalactite) so as not to disturb the tracks, etc, is fascinating considering how far removed it is from the first telling of that tale (would it be from the classic Greek civilization? perhaps a variation in Egyptian or even Mesopotamian?) definitely a film that will spark your imagination and interest

The cultural significance of art work is whatever that is, what we arbitrarily give as value to those paintings, subjectively we are ought to create it's meaning, the paintings of the Chauvet caves in the South of France, doubtlessly have survived the test of time and it is easy to acknowledge them and to tell on their importance on art history, but what can we do or say as confronted by a Forty Thousand year cave painting that is particularly beautiful and impressive by so many aspects. "In a forbidden recess of the cave, there's a footprint of an eight- year-old boy next to the footprint of a wolf. Did a hungry wolf stalk the boy? Or did they walk together as friends? Or were their tracks made thousands of years apart? We'll never know." One of the Herzog's narrations on the movie that goes to show a lot about the role of imagination and narration on the making of history. The imagination also has skin and bones, it has happened also. Any work of art confront us with something to recognize, something to get, I guess most people can find themselves on indifference, or angst or anger, when confronted by an work of art that rings no bells, that pulls no confrontation, that leaves us there, staring, in the riddle of our own souls. It is important to notice that all the archaeologists, the art curators, the historians, even with all the technology, that enables them to make all the assumptions on history, on how their lives were, on what were the reasons for the paintings and how they were produced. We are still driven to a fundamental questions, that might be key to understanding the importance of art in our modern culture and the understanding of the power that imagination and art plays in weave the very own fabric of our lives.And that what it is left to do for all the people interviewed in the movie, fantasies of understanding, what this knowing that we share it is all about, and each one of them in their own uniqueness make their story about it, through a variety of means, the nose and smelling being one of the funniest ones. I am not sure if a traditional history TV channel would be able to show all the quirks of it's own subject matter, it takes courage to undermine and to be honest and frank on what it is being filmed, and that It is one of the characteristics that must be valued under the making of a documentary.It is Herzog methods, or just his personality, he can pick and choose what it is of more interest to him, he deliberately says and uses what got his attention, and drives the interviews to a sphere where he can confront people with his own sense of humor and his own inquisitions and interests of what he is trying to show, he is capable to show us, how laughable we can be, we can see bluntly the mechanisms that he uses when he asks for the archaeologist to not go get the sphere and asks him if he thought he could kill a horse with it. The idea that the cave man were of a different soul by the ex-circus man and archaeologist, that they had a different perspective on life, a different way understanding it, and the same for seeing and doing the art work that they have made. It reminded me a similar story I have heard about this indigenous person in a forest in Brazil, and he was very concerned on making fire, because soon the sun was going to set, the researches who wanted to walk as much as they could during daytime were not that worried of getting wood to make fire, one of the researcher tells that he them used his lighter to make the fire, and that in just one second there it was, this simple act somehow, this whole culture condensed in this little technology, were able in the indigenous eyes to make his whole world fall apart.So, when Herzog highlighted by what at first seen absurd and delirious connections on the albino crocodiles and the nuclear power plants, are really scary for the poetic and real inquiry that it is trying to make, simply by showing things that are actually there and putting one and one together and pushing us into seen, what a huge, and laughable project of society and humanity we can be. How far have we moved? All and all I think Herzog it is pretty funny, and I will finish with one more peace of narration he delivers as seeing some ancient human sculptures, "there seems to have existed a visual convention extending all the way beyond Baywatch".

Why Herzog deemed it prudent to film this in 3D is something of a mystery. One supposes he wanted to try and make the paintings, not on flat surfaces, come alive, and maybe they do, in 3D, but in 2D it does nothing. Worse, this film really does nothing. There is nothing essentially Herzogian in it. It's a documentary any filmmaker could do for a cable channel, save for the pointless Postscript to the film, involving albino alligators and mystic mumbo jumbo Herzog finds profound.The film, at 89 minutes, is probably an hour too long, and while interesting cinematography, by Peter Zeitlinger,, and a nice soundtrack by Ernst Reijseger, enliven the film, they can only do so much. Herzog's narration is not what it is in earlier documentaries of high quality, and one sense the filmmaker gets bored with it all about halfway through the film. Nonetheless, it's a tossup as to which of the two documentaries, here under review is worse. This one is not good, but not bad, merely dull.