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Of course, a movie about Chauvet cave (la grotte de Chauvet in French) was really intriguing and after watching ‘Grizzly Man’ and ‘Encounters at the End of the World’, I have become quite fond of Werner Herzog’s documentaries. However, I didn’t expect it to be so awe-inspiring. I mean, at first, I thought ‘Great… I’m getting to spend 90 minutes in some cave, I’m going to get bored so fast…’but no, it never got boring. Indeed, from the very first second we entered this cave, the whole thing was quite spellbinding. Basically, those paintings are the oldest ever found (about 35000 years old) and about twice as old as the previous oldest painting. When watching these, it’s basically watching the birth of Art which was quite overwhelming, at least, if you have any interest in Art like I do. The striking thing is that even though those paintings were obviously primitive, they also had some impressive artistic qualities to them, like some amazing shades and contrast effects and those were just simply beautiful to look at. It was also kind of emotional to realize that those ‘primitive’ cavemen actually had some artistic aspirations already 35000 years ago, something that really has defined us as human-being and one of the major differences we have with other animals. As usual with Herzog, you have this rather weird narration provided by Herzog and it can be annoying (sometimes, he throws the weirdest questions to the people he interviews and they often look at him giving him this look ‘what the f*ck are you talking about?!’) but I think it’s an asset because its enhances the whole surreal aspect of this situation. Apparently, it was released in the theaters in 3D and, according to Roger Ebert, it worked pretty well so I really wonder how the whole thing looked in this format. To conclude, I thought it was pretty awesome, you’ll never get closer to this cave and it’s a lifetime opportunity to see those amazing paintings so I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Art.
8/10
