"Cave of Forgotten Dreams discussion." Thu Jul-14-11 05:30 AM by denny
Saw it a few days ago. Funny stuff.
I saw the movie as being split into two parts.
For one, it spent alot of time making fun of the way we record and observe this type of finding. Both scientifically and the art history side. Werner's pissing on everybody in this film...especially that woman who was interpreting the 'meaning' of the paintings....the curator of the cave. I was cracking up when he tied a camera to a stick to reveal the answer to one of her 'mysteries'.
Or the history nerd who tries unsuccessfully to throw a spear.....Or the 'heartbeat' scene which was clearly staged and satirized the standard discovery channel treatment this cave might have got.....Or the largely misunderstood albino alligator ending. He clearly is comparing them to modern humanity. "I wonder what they will think when they crawl into the cave and see the paintings for themselves'.
Perhaps the most openly comedic films he's made. He also lies a few times....hilariously. A quote from the movie: 'We are locked in history. They (the painters) were not.'
Two, the only modern human act that is safe from Werner's parody is filmmaking. The only modern human act that is taken seriously. It's represented as a 'natural act' that has kinship or lineage with the 30,000 year old paintings. Werner's ego is in full bloom here.
At one point, calls the paintings 'proto-films'....there seemed to be a comparison between the walls of the cave and his filmstock, being 3d......compares the observance of shadows in the cave with Fred Astaire's 'shadow dance' scene......Long indulgent shots that stood in contrast to the farcical nature of the other scenes and suggest 'just look stupid....stop talking'.
This movie is not about the paintings. It's not a historical documentary. It's part-comedy. And philosophically, it's about OUR PERCEPTION of the paintings. And how our aims to quantify, interpret and 'find meaning' provide evidence of our unique place in nature....and how this 'nature' is both similar and different to that of the painters.
8. "I felt more frustration than amusement in it" In response to Reply # 0
Every time Werner talked to someone it seemed like he was butting in, no one ever seemed to get his point.
Worse, I don't think he communicated his point well through most of the movie.
Things lightened up with the man trying to throw the spear and the Master Perfumer (our favorite part) but by that time the images of the cave had outworn their welcome.
He showed the same paintings too often; I know there are not many but they lost their power along the way.
Admittedly they looked beautiful immediately before the postscript, but if his aim really was to poke fun at the scientific community there appears to have been plenty of material for him to include.
I realize that this was an essay but there need to be more clues to the thesis in the beginning. Instead he forced us to listen to drivel and only helped to make himself look ridiculous by interjecting when apparently these people could have made fools of themselves.
9. "Thanks for the reply." In response to Reply # 8 Thu Jul-21-11 09:44 PM by denny
>Every time Werner talked to someone it seemed like he was >butting in, >no one ever seemed to get his point.
Yah, definitely. But thats his thing. He doesn't 'interview' his subjects....he 'manipulates' them. This is what I mean when I say he's a really disingenous doc maker. He's not investigating. In many cases he already knows exactly what he wants from a given subject and only uses them to fulfill a pre-determined motivation. It's a common cliche to describe his work.....and he said it himself.....his documentaries are often more fictional or scripted and his fictional movies are more documentary-like.
>Worse, >I don't think he communicated his point well through most of >the movie.
Fair thing to say.....it's impossible to ignore the pretentiousness of his themes which, for me, are both hilariously self-deprecating yet profound at the same time. I think he goes back and forth between being aware how full of shit he is and genuine attempts at keen observations. The line between these two gets blurry....especially when the 'keen observation' he's making is that we are full of shit.
>Things lightened up with the man trying to throw the spear and >the Master Perfumer (our favorite part) but by that time the >images of the cave had outworn their welcome. > >He showed the same paintings too often; >I know there are not many >but they lost their power along the way.
I could be off-base here....but I remember thinking something along these lines too and I wonder if it was on purpose. Perhaps he wanted to slowly drain the power of the images? Which makes the statement....'hey idiots, it's simply a picture of a horse.' We could stare in amazement at a child's crude drawing of a stick figure, house and sun and try to derive 'meaning' from that as well. In a sense.....making fun of our fascination of the paintings.
Not sure if that interpretation holds water though.
>I realize that this was an essay >but there need to be more clues to the thesis in the >beginning. >Instead he forced us to listen to drivel >and only helped to make himself look ridiculous by >interjecting >when apparently these people could have made fools of >themselves.
I enjoyed the drivel but agree with the characterization.
>Yah, definitely. But thats his thing. He doesn't 'interview' >his subjects....he 'manipulates' them. This is what I mean >when I say he's a really disingenous doc maker. He's not >investigating. In many cases he already knows exactly what he >wants from a given subject and only uses them to fulfill a >pre-determined motivation. It's a common cliche to describe >his work.....and he said it himself.....his documentaries are >often more fictional or scripted and his fictional movies are >more documentary-like.
Knowing this, I wonder why it took him so long in the film to manipulate his reality stars. For a solid chunk of the movie he allowed them to get their points across without sounding more absurd than him. The staged scenes had one thing in common: Werner shut the hell up and let the fools present themselves. For too much of the film, Werner himself comes across as the foolish one by speaking up in ineffective ways - his images do the job for him later in the film much more successfully.
>Fair thing to say.....it's impossible to ignore the >pretentiousness of his themes which, for me, are both >hilariously self-deprecating yet profound at the same time. I >think he goes back and forth between being aware how full of >shit he is and genuine attempts at keen observations ....especially when the >'keen observation' he's making is that we are full of shit.
But there was no self-deprecation here; he was genuine. At no time did I feel he was poking any kind of fun at himself. If anything, he was illuminating himself and his chosen form of expression. That is unless he was using "Swing Time" as a comparison because he finds it to be a particularly banal film.
No, I think he took all of this serious but he found that he didn't particularly care for the people he had to interview and decided to make them look ridiculous. It was especially misanthropic when you consider that at least one of his goals seemed to be the beautification of the paintings.
If he truly wanted us to just look at the paintings we could have. If he wanted to be the only one talking about the paintings he could have. Instead, he decided to let other people talk about it and never really conveyed his point well until the end.
>I could be off-base here....but I remember thinking something >along these lines too and I wonder if it was on purpose. >Perhaps he wanted to slowly drain the power of the images? >Which makes the statement....'hey idiots, it's simply a >picture of a horse.' We could stare in amazement at a child's >crude drawing of a stick figure, house and sun and try to >derive 'meaning' from that as well. In a sense.....making fun >of our fascination of the paintings. > >Not sure if that interpretation holds water though.
Eh... It's not outside the realm of possibilities, but if that is the case than that is slightly malicious film making. I prefer to be fascinated than desensitized.
13. "RE: You're welcome." In response to Reply # 10
He definitely gets more and more satirical in respects to the way that he treats the variety of disciplines that surround the paintings. This may be an issue of pacing in the movie for me. My first inkling was when he showed the lazer-generated map of the cave. He did/nt say anything explicit....but I think he presented it as being a touch unnecessary and indulgent.
I disagree that he wasn't poking fun at himself. But even the OP I said he glorified his documentary filmmaking. He definitely seems to play the movie like a competition between disciplines. Which one is the right one to use for a discovery like this? Science? Art? History?
Werner makes an arrogant argument for his film as the best medium to experience the paintings. But he's always got his tongue in his cheek. The albino alligator coda and the Fred Astaire footage are clearly poking fun at himself imo.
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