movie rec: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
May. 19th, 2011 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraSo it's possible that by the time I actually make it out of the house to see a movie, I'm so primed to consider it worthwhile that I'm incapable of judging said movie as anything but good, but: Cave of Forgotten Dreams is awesome! In the classical "awe-inspiring" sense. This is a 3D documentary about the Paleolithic cave paintings in Chauvet cave, and it's not quite as mind-blowing as actually seeing cave paintings in person, but it's a) a pristine cave that's closed to visitors and b) cheaper than going to France.
- One of the most jaw-dropping moments was when they describe a drawing done over another drawing, 5000 years later. I mean, that's almost as long as all of history, and to have that cultural continuity... dude.
- There's some neat framing bits about the technical challenge of doing the filming and personal relationship to what they're seeing, especially at the beginning.
- Except there's *too much* of that at the end; there's a really obvious, strong stopping point letting the paintings speak for themselves and then another five minutes of closing blather plus a really bizarre postscript involving nuclear power and albino alligators. Seriously, we don't care about your bullshit ideas about the human spirit. We care about the paintings.
- I think I have a thing about mammoths, because whenever they started showing a new section I was like "maybe mammoths?" (they'd previously mentioned one I couldn't quite make out) and then near the end we get a *really good mammoth* and I was all "eeeeee!". Rhinos: also very cool.
- They spent awhile on what might be a partial human figure and I couldn't make heads or tails of it (er - it was tails, a woman's lower bits) and, enh, I am not convinced human depiction = so much more interesting than anything else.
- On the other hand, the bit about the Venus of Hohle Fels figurine was interesting. I swear in the 3D image it looked like her vulva had a clit, which, like, go Aurignacian cave-people! Not all moderns have that figured out!
- In general I could have done with a little more background info, reference to other caves, etc. I mean, not a *big* deal as I can now go online and look stuff like that up, but, enh. I love timelines and illustrative animations and that kind of thing.
- It turns out if you go see a documentary, you get previews about *other documentaries* (and not the godawful previews you've had to suffer through at other recent movies. Specifically, no fucking beaver. I don't think I mentioned this at the time, but all of the previews at Atlas Shrugged were like "middle-aged loser guy still has a chance to fix his life" - the beaver, something with Tom Hanks, maybe one other thing? I guess we know what demographic they were expecting...)
- But back to cave paintings: I love the stuff where they're trying to figure out stuff about who the artists were, like, did the same person do x and y? So fascinating. There's a thing about how there are no paintings in the part of the cave that would have had light, only in the total darkness. It's like as close as we can get to finding relics of an alien civilisation, except it's us. Dude.
- One of the most jaw-dropping moments was when they describe a drawing done over another drawing, 5000 years later. I mean, that's almost as long as all of history, and to have that cultural continuity... dude.
- There's some neat framing bits about the technical challenge of doing the filming and personal relationship to what they're seeing, especially at the beginning.
- Except there's *too much* of that at the end; there's a really obvious, strong stopping point letting the paintings speak for themselves and then another five minutes of closing blather plus a really bizarre postscript involving nuclear power and albino alligators. Seriously, we don't care about your bullshit ideas about the human spirit. We care about the paintings.
- I think I have a thing about mammoths, because whenever they started showing a new section I was like "maybe mammoths?" (they'd previously mentioned one I couldn't quite make out) and then near the end we get a *really good mammoth* and I was all "eeeeee!". Rhinos: also very cool.
- They spent awhile on what might be a partial human figure and I couldn't make heads or tails of it (er - it was tails, a woman's lower bits) and, enh, I am not convinced human depiction = so much more interesting than anything else.
- On the other hand, the bit about the Venus of Hohle Fels figurine was interesting. I swear in the 3D image it looked like her vulva had a clit, which, like, go Aurignacian cave-people! Not all moderns have that figured out!
- In general I could have done with a little more background info, reference to other caves, etc. I mean, not a *big* deal as I can now go online and look stuff like that up, but, enh. I love timelines and illustrative animations and that kind of thing.
- It turns out if you go see a documentary, you get previews about *other documentaries* (and not the godawful previews you've had to suffer through at other recent movies. Specifically, no fucking beaver. I don't think I mentioned this at the time, but all of the previews at Atlas Shrugged were like "middle-aged loser guy still has a chance to fix his life" - the beaver, something with Tom Hanks, maybe one other thing? I guess we know what demographic they were expecting...)
- But back to cave paintings: I love the stuff where they're trying to figure out stuff about who the artists were, like, did the same person do x and y? So fascinating. There's a thing about how there are no paintings in the part of the cave that would have had light, only in the total darkness. It's like as close as we can get to finding relics of an alien civilisation, except it's us. Dude.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 01:36 pm (UTC)There was also mention of footprints of a human and cave bear side-by-side on the cave floor -- but nobody knows by how many minutes or decades or millennia apart they were left. Did those make the film? Was there any tentative conclusion drawn about the chronology here?
Yay mammoth art!!! Ok, this really does seem worth seeking out. Thanks for the review!
no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 04:10 am (UTC)Footprints: don't remember anything about cave bear. There's a thing about the tracks of an 8 year old boy which may overlap with the tracks of a wolf - was the wolf chasing the boy? Was it domesticated? Were they there years apart? They really left it on an "impossible to know" note.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 05:56 am (UTC)