Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

I’m never gonna get to explore the Chauvet Cave–discovered in 1994 and promptly closed to the general public by the French government so as to protect its priceless contents from our grubby hands and moldy breath–so Werner Herzog has given me the next best thing: a 3D tour of the cave that really makes me feel like I’m walking along its metal catwalks, myself.

This is the first 3D film I’ve seen on the big screen since Jaws 3D (’83). I kid you not. I have studiously avoided the recent (itchy) rash of 3D films (both “real” 3D like Avatar and “fake” 3D like Clash of the Titans) because, well, I guess seeing those films in 3D interested me about as much as seeing them in 2D would’ve… which is to say not at all. I happen to think Cameron’s a hack and I don’t like the sword-and-sandal genre at the best of times, either, so these were relatively easy decisions for me.

But Herzog… Well, Herzog is one of my favourites. And he has such an interesting cinematic eye (think of the opening shots of Aguirre) and an unusual angle on the world (think of his ruminations on the obscenity and violence of nature in Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams), surely he could pull something interesting out of this technology.

The style of 3D that Herzog employs here is what he calls “the mildest form”. It’s not the intrusive kind. What I mean by that is that it’s not the kind of 3D where the film intrudes on the viewer’s world (you know–where you flinch when things get hurled towards you) but, rather, it’s the kind of 3D where the viewer feels like s/he has entered into the space displayed onscreen. I felt like I was actually in the cave, with the frame acting as kind of a window through which I looked–I pictured myself walking along, holding a clear glass window up in front of me and looking through that. It was quite startling. In fact, my breath was literally taken away by the first shot of the film, where I had the disconcerting feeling that I wasn’t merely watching a tracking shot that moved forward along a furrow between two rows of grapevines but, instead, I was actually walking along that furrow, myself. I felt a little vertiginous tilt as my brain tried to process what my eyes were telling it versus what the rest of my body was telling it.

Some complain that the hand-held camera doesn’t work outside the cave, but I didn’t find that to be the case. As a matter of fact, I was all agog as I made the trek up the path to the cave entrance or swooped underneath the Pont d’Arc natural bridge over the Ardèche River.

If I have any complaint it is that the film is largely (although not entirely) missing the amusing tone that Herzog’s narration typically brings. Perhaps it is because the subject is so important to him… He has been fascinated with cave art since he was a child:

As a boy in Germany, Herzog had been mesmerized by a book about cave paintings that he saw in a store window. Practically penniless, he got a job as a tennis ball boy to earn enough money to buy the book. “I’d sneak into the store every week to make sure no one had bought it,” he explained. “After six months, I had enough money to pay for it. The deep amazement it inspired in me is with me to this day. I remember a shudder of awe possessing me as I opened its pages.” (LA Times)

Then, in 2008, Judith Thurman’s Vanity Fair article about Chauvet Cave triggered Herzog’s desire to film inside the cave. Its discovery meant that humans were creating art and documenting their lives twice as far back as previously believed.

Peter Zeitlinger’s handheld camera lingers (almost fetishistically, as The Documentary Blog ably describes it) over the 32,000-year-old images painted on the walls as Herzog ponders the artists’ motivations and techniques–wondering, for example, if the artist who “signed” his work with an imprint of his hand (distinguishable from other signatures because of his crooked little finger) did so in some kind of bid for immortality, or if an artist wanted to suggest movement by painting six legs on an animal (a type of ‘proto-cinema’, he posits). For another example of this, see the repeated image of the rhino’s horn on the left side of the photo posted above. I think he’s right about that, actually.

Throughout the film, Herzog interviews archaeologists, paleontologists, artists, and–in one fairly ludicrous case–a perfumer who says he uses his über-sensitive nose to find underground caverns. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was somewhat trepidatious about set photos of Herzog posing with a dude I interpreted as being made up to look like a caveman but, as it turns out, it was nothing as whacked as that. It was just one of those “-ists” who uses a musical instrument of that period to play (*ahem*) “The Star Spangled Banner”. Why? Er, I dunno.

More perplexing than the comparatively pedestrian perfumer and flautist is the film’s epilogue, where he turns his attention to a group of ‘mutant radioactive albino crocodiles’ living in a local aquarium, which he suggests have been affected by nuclear waste from a nearby power plant. I felt like Terence McDonagh–Nicholas Cage’s drug-addled character in Herzog’s 2009 film, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans–unsure if anybody else in the room could actually see ‘em!

The truth of the matter is somewhat different.

Yep, as it turns out, Herzog–as is his wont–was taking liberty with “the truth” to get at what he calls “the ecstatic truth”:

‘I tell the story in a way where I’m searching for not just the facts. I’m into something which gives you deeper insight into an essence, into a concentration of something that is way beyond facts and that is truth: an ecstasy of truth, as I sometimes call it. Otherwise, facts are not that interesting. If you want to have facts, go and buy the phone directory of Manhattan. You’ve got eight million entries and they’re all correct–all facts–but they do not constitute anything.’ (from Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary)

So what is the ecstatic truth he is trying to get at? That unique places like this are going to be ruined if we don’t stop trampling all over the damned place like the proverbial bull in the china shop. Or, y’know, someat like that.

I was really happy to have the opportunity to not only see this film in 3D on the big screen (probably my only chance to do so, since it’s more than a little unlikely to play on the big screen–in any D!–in the city where I live) but to also get to see it at TIFF’s new Bell Lightbox facility. Luxurious digs! Many thanks to P for the ticket!