Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D! ~ Herzog

Pretty good sized audience for a 2:40 show on a friday afternoon! Go Tucson! The biggest question here is how did they manage to get the footage they did and weave it into much of anything coherent. The cave was only discovered in 1994 and is full of delicate stelagtites and stelagmites as well as all sorts of deposits that have turned bone matter and rock into crystals. The filmmakers had to walk on a two foot wide walkway for only an hour at a time and carry their own lights, cool lights. The art is amazing, most all of it done with charcoal, so black on white rock and all of animals. Except for one little area that is full of red handprints, very distinctive palm prints, all of one person with a distinctive crook in his little finger. They can date the bones and the drawings and even the bear scratches that sometime cover the drawings... somewhere in the neighborhood of 36,000 years old give or take and many are drawings on top of and alongside older drawings, some done 5,000 years apart. The cave collapsed in on itself and was sealed and so is a perfect time capsule. Herzog, in his own inimitable way includes a score which is chanting of some sort and eventually rubs me the wrong way. He also does a voice over with more questions than answers. The fact that this was all filmed in 3D is also such an extravagance, but if not for this, than what? Thor? ha! This is a piece of history as well as portraits by ancestors we will never know. Just spectacular. Though I have to say, even though I've included a couple of the drawings here, my favorite were the red hand prints, positive, not negatives. Couldn't find a pic of those though.