One beautiful Friday afternoon while my brother was practicing violin with my mom, and the radio was blasting NPR, I sat myself down with a box of cookies and a Do-Not-Disturb sign on the door and prepared to watch Cave of Forgotten Dreams, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog, and produced by Eric Nelson and Adrienne Cuiffo.

All I knew about the documentary was that it was a French movie about caves. As you can imagine, I was not very excited to watch a movie about caves no matter how good people said it was. So as I began to watch I had pretty much no idea what was in store for me.

The movie opens to a string of melodic “ah”s as the camera swoops over the beautiful countryside around the Ardèche River in the south of France. As you zoom in to a narrow path on a cliff face on one side of the river the “ah”s end and the voice of Werner Herzog permeates the scene. You watch on and learn how on that very path three speleologists (people who study caves) led by Jean-Marie Chauvet were about to make history. The three speleologists on that day in 1994 were looking for drafts of air coming from inside the rock face that would signify the existence of a cave. The three found what they were looking for and eventually squeezed down a narrow shaft into one of the most important discoveries about human history ever made.

The narrative starts with Herzog explaining some of the history of the cave. He tells you how the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, discovered in 1994 and named after its discoverer, had been trapped by a rock slide that perfectly preserved it for tens of thousands of years before its discovery. And how the Chauvet cave contains the oldest cave paintings known to man, approximately 32,000 years older than any other cave painting. In the film, however, Herzog rambles on about the countryside and other natural formations in the area, instead of staying true to the theme of the movie which is the cave. Also, when the movie switches to the inside of the cave, Herzog introduces a sense of urgency – based on having a limited time in the cave – that is contradicted by the seemingly long time they spent in the cave.

The cave is breathtaking with pure white stalactites and stalagmites and has a sort of ethereal feel to it. But the movie is not about the beauty of the cave, it is about the paintings on the wall. The cave paintings occupy a large portion of the 1,300 foot long cave and they range from intricate and beautiful paintings of horses, bears, and mammoths, to simple handprints on a wall. The cave is presented well, with sweeping flashlights illuminating the paintings and a lot of interesting commentary by archeologists who have been allowed to enter the cave with the movie. There are shots of just the paintings so you really feel like you get to know them. The whole encounter is intimate.

One of the most striking things about the paintings is how beautiful they are. The paintings seem to move along the curves of the wall along with the flashlights, and prehistoric man has added some visual nuances to make them appear to be running or dancing; sweeping legs, the manes of horses streaming out from behind their bodies. The utilization of some of the curves in the wall help the animals depicted almost come to life. Although the paintings are not beautiful in the same way as a rose or a stained glass window, there is something awesome about them in that you know that those paintings are the source of all the art we know today. I wonder sometimes whether the prehistoric men and women who made those paintings knew what an impact they would have on a society that would exist tens of thousands of years after their time.

Throughout the first half of the movie you follow the team as they look through the cave, analyzing the paintings, the skeletons on the floor of the cave, and the cave itself. The work by the team was interesting and informative, although the film could have described more of the research being done. During the second half of the movie I began to catch myself drifting off. It went on a bunch of different tangents, some barely relevant. They even interviewed the former president of the French perfume society who was apparently trying to find new caves by smell.

Although the cave and paintings were beautiful, and the movie was full of funky, psychedelic music, I felt the movie left something to be desired. I was left with the feeling that I had not really learned that much about the history, and the research being done on the Chauvet cave. Maybe that was because the topic was so extensive or because people don’t know that much about it, but I felt like the movie had too many brief scenes that weren’t explained in depth (with the exception of those actually filmed inside the cave), and it also had an odd metaphor about albino crocodiles at the end which either went way over my head or just didn’t make sense.

Although I didn’t love Cave of Forgotten Dreams, I think some people definitely would. I was watching the movie expecting a lot of information about the cave, but people who are interested more simply in seeing the paintings in the cave and getting a taste of prehistoric life in general will enjoy Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It is a good movie for children of any age and especially those interested in art or prehistoric life.