An ‘Avatar’ for Eggheads

Cave of Forgotten
Dreams

Directed by Werner
Herzog 

At the
IFC Center (in 3D) & the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

Runtime: 90 min.

Leave it to Werner
Herzog to find a use for 3D technology that isn’t part of some gimmick to
hoodwink kids of all ages. Herzog’s new doc, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, peddles his usual ideas about chaos and
entropy, but 3D gives his navel-gazing optical depth. Fascinated with the
Paleolithic cave drawings found in 1994 at France’s Chauvet cave, Herzog looks
at the world with a you-are-there, you-can-almost-touch-it eagerness. An unexpectedly
humble side comes out: He’s in awe.

He calls cave
painting that dates back 32,000 years: “One of the greatest discoveries in the
history of human culture.” Herzog’s genuine mix of wonder and confusion
entertains the possibility of ancient mysticism suggested by skeletons and
drawn and sculpted totemic figures left by primeval worshippers. He’s almost like a spelunking Jacques Cousteau (or Steve Zissou) in his appreciation of glittering crystals,
calcite drippings that become concretion growth in cascaded ridges and waves
and art that resembles artfully veined marble.

Herzog interviews
the scientists, archeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists,
archeo-zoologists—even a professional perfume sniffer—who all explore and
maintain the Chauvet cave, eventually speculating about, “What is humanness?”
Perhaps indulging the 3D phenomenon has urged Herzog to explicitly consider the
creation and meaning of art—the way mankind, in his words, “Inscribes memory.”

“These images are
memories of long forgotten dreams,” Herzog says, invoking Wagner and German
romanticism—even goofily equating cave shadows with Fred Astaire’s “Bojangles”
dance in Swing Time. Asking, “Were
the Chauvet paintings the beginning of the modern human soul?” is part of
Herzog’s game. After questioning the “barrier between the world where we are
and the world of the spirit,” he arrives at his standard position that “nothing
is real, nothing is certain,” but at least finds a provocative, surreal image—albino
crocodiles—to confirm his quasi-scientific art pessimism. Always the hipster-Expressionist,
Herzog uses 3D to make an Avatar for
eggheads.