Werner Herzog’s The Cave of Forgotten Dreams Plumbs the Depths of Human Consciousness

Werner Herzog’s The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 3D documentary about cave paintings at least 32,000 years old in Chauvet Cave in southern France, offers one of film’s most fascinating glimpses into the dawn of human consciousness. Herzog depicted the film in 3D for the first time in his career to better convey how the art work assimilates with the natural contours of the ancient walls. The visuals are captivating, bringing the Gravettian/Magdalenian-period paintings and drawings to cinematic life.


Herzog, who is not to be confused with the Saul Bellow protagonitst, nor the former St. Louis Cardinals baseball manager, is the director who gave us “Grizzly Man” (cue the “woooo-yip-woooo-yip-wo” theme), as well as the lesser-known “Aguirre, the Wrath of God”, ”Lessons of Darkness”, ”The Wild Blue Yonder”, “Fata Morgana” and “Encounters at the End of the World.” His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature. Despite the director’s stated belief that the universe is a godless and random place, his work also often explores man’s search for universal meaning, perhaps never more so than in this documentary.

Herzog’s interest in Chauvet Cave was prompted by Judith Thurman’s New Yorker article, ”First Impressions”, which explored the potential significance of the language of signs discovered in the caves of northern Spain and southern France, as well as the cave artists’ contributions to artistic forms such as pointilism (eat your heart out, Seurat), animation, and perspective, a technique that was not rediscovered until the Athenian Golden Age. As Thurman herself described the vitality of the ancient art in her article: “by the flicker of torchlight, the animals seem to surge from the walls, and move across them like figures in a magiclantern show (in that sense, the artists invented animation).”

The Chauvet Cave itself was not re-discovered by modernity until a week before Christmas in 1994: the fortuitious find of three spelunkers exploring the limestone cliffs above the Pont d-’Arc natural land bridge along the the Ardèche River. Adding further mystery to the discovery, archaeologists subsequently identified a child’s footprints left in the cave’s soft, clay-like floor. Next to the child’s footprints are those of a wolf, “as if two friends, the wolf and the boy, had walked in,” as Herzog stated in amazement (see clip below). After the wolf-child’s visit to the cave, evidence suggests that the cave had remained absolutely untouched until 1994. The footprints may be the oldest human footprints that can be dated accurately.

The French government apparently deemed the find significant enough to immediately close off access to the cave, as a locked steel door now bars entry to the air shaft. Behind that door, the cave’s guardians enforce a strict regime. Herzog was allowed only a four-man crew, including himself. They were limited to four cold-panel lights, powered from battery belts, and could walk only on two-foot wide aluminum pathways that had been installed in the cave’s interior. They were allowed to film for only four hours each day, and if anyone had to leave the cave during those sessions, for any reason, that day’s visit was over. The guardians want to shield the cave’s air supply in order to protect it from outsiders and the elements.


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