Robbie Collin / News of the World – 5 stars

“By turns hilarious, surreal, terrifying and sublime – I watched in deranged wonderment…five stars”

Adam Smith / Empire – 4 stars

Documentary in which Werner Herzog becomes the first film-maker to be able to shoot the spectacularly preserved cave drawings of the Chauvet caverns in France.

High up on an almost inaccessible cliff-face in the stunning in the French Ardèche is a small metal door. As Alice would say it’s an odd place for a door, but what’s behind it is even more surprising.  Probably best described as The Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic art, the interior of the Chauvet cave, named after speleologists who discovered them in 1994, is covered with incredible, shockingly vivid ancient paintings, their miraculous preservation the result of a rockfall tens of thousands of years ago. Recognising both the uniqueness of the paintings and their worrying fragility (similar paintings have been affected by mould growth in other caves, the result of the moisture in human breath) the French Government closed the site to anyone but a handful of experts. In the intervening decade and a half more people have been to the summit of Everest than have gazed at the paintings and no film-maker has been allowed to shoot inside.

And so, with a kind of joyful inevitability, enter Werner Herzog who finally gained permission to accompany an archaeological team and to film for a limited number of hours inside the caves, reportedly finalizing the deal by offering to become an employee of the French Government for the salary of one Euro. The technical restrictions imposed are daunting: only three crew-members including Herzog were allowed in carrying only light-weight, cameras, light-panels powered from waist-worn battery packs and at no point are they to stray of the 2-foot wide walkways that protect the cave-floor. So, of course, Herzog decides to shoot in 3D . . .

What emerges is an astonishing, mesmerising and at times unexpectedly moving film; Herzog making the complexities and difficulties of filming part of the subject before, in a virtuoso sequence towards the end, conjuring the paintings into a kind of life. Using only the movement of a camera and two lights he produces images more other-worldly and affecting than anything in Inception.

And as with most Herzog documentaries it wears its flaws on its sleeve. For the most part his use of 3D is the most appropriate in the format’s otherwise gimmicky history; the drawings that crowd the undulating, uneven walls of the cave spring into complex reliefs, but it’s less appropriate for shaky-cam head-to-head interviews. Herzog’s philosophical musings might be a turn off to those unfamiliar with them – to we worshippers at the the Bavarian’s temple they’re a familiar pleasure – and while he might be more poet than sage he does make the provocative point that we moderns can never really know what the images’ meaning was; these proto-humans’ dreams are truly forgotten. That he makes this profound point via a pair of irradiated albino alligators from a nuclear power-station 20 miles down the road, well . . . that’s just Werner.

Verdict

A typically quixotic documentary in which in which great unknown artists from 35,000 ago collaborate with one working in 2011. Profound, mysterious and utterly absorbing.

John Naughton / GQ

Tickets for Cave Of Forgotten Dreams in 3D should be stamped, “Money back if not awestruck”. Maverick German filmmaker, Werner Herzog has taken cameras equipped with 3D technology into the Chauvet cave, discovered in the Ardeche region of France in 1994 and containing what are believed to be the oldest paintings in the world, made some 32,000 years ago and preserved in remarkable detail due to a rockfall some 10,000 years later. The results are extraordinary - an almost hallucinatory journey which attempts to unpick the significance and symbolism of these incredibly rendered and unimaginably ancient works of art.  

At one point Herzog focuses on an animal drawn with eight legs, to signify movement and argues that this, as the first representation of a moving picture can be said to represent the birth of film. It’s certainly satisfying to see the earliest example of the artform captured by the newest. A technology whose greatest success has been to create a futuristic off-world has been harnessed to draw us into a far more remarkable world in our own past. It’s no exaggeration to say that for the first time since its development, it’s possible to see a point to a 3D film. The journey below ground assumes an almost claustrophobic reality while the artwork leaps into life thanks to the beautifully captured contours of the cave which the original artists used for their own version of the third dimension.

This being a Herzog film, it does not approach the subject in anything other than a subjective manner. The film barely considers the nearby cave of Lascaux, discovered in 1940. Rather you will see one of the team of Chauvet archaeologists discussing his former career as a unicyclist, a man playing the Star Spangled Banner on a primitive flute, another with a keen sense of smell attempting, unsuccessfully, to sniff the past and a tank full of albino crocodiles living in a nearby biosphere heated by a nuclear power station. It’s Herzog’s trademark mix of playful, provocative controversy, but it’s also born of an astute realisation that spells underground surrounded by images which ask impossible and fundamental questions about humanity and spirituality need to be leavened with something lighter.

At times Herzog is completely disingenuous. One of the film’s narrative hooks is an image on a downward spur of rock. Because of restrictions of walking on the cave’s floor, we can’t see what’s on its far side and when Herzog does reveal the image - with a camera stuck on the end of a pole – you’d imagine he’d revealed the dark side of the moon. Later I read that cave archaeologists had done the same thing years earlier.
Nor is it completely clear that Herzog himself knows what he thinks about it all and the rapid release of the film gives the impression that this is almost a first draft rather than a finished product. But given the unknowable mystery of the subject matter, a lively confusion is not the worst way to approach the issue and an intense communion between viewer and image precludes the need for any commentary. Besides, it’s his limitless tenacity which enabled him to be the first to deliver a feature length 3D version of events. In comparison with him, all other filmmakers are lightweights.

Adam Smith / Radio Times – 4 stars

In 1994 a trio of speleologists (cavers to you and me) inched their way through a small opening high on a rock-face in the French Ardèche. Inside they found vast caverns whose walls were covered with stunning Paleolithic art. The French Government immediately sealed the cave allowing only a few scientists access. Genius documentarian Werner Herzog is the first film-maker to be allowed inside (he sealed the deal by offering to become an employee of the French Government for the salary of one Euro) and has made full, inspiring use of it. Brilliantly employing 3D to accentuate the painting’s use of the undulating cave-walls he reveals this ancient equivalent to The Sistine Chapel in its incredible, vivid glory. Herzog fans will forgive his familiar impenetrable philosophical musings, particularly since the movie’s undoubted highlight is an extended sequence towards the end in which, using the bare minimum of equipment he was allowed to bring into the cavern, he brings the paintings to life using simply shadows, camera movement and Ernst Reijseger’s haunting score. It’s worth the admission price alone