SXSW Film

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Festival Favorites
D: Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog, the poet laureate of extremity, has returned with another lighthearted romp about the inevitability of obsolescence and the strange beauty of human struggle. Picking up where Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World left off, Cave of Forgotten Dreams takes us to one of the far reaches of human experience, the 32,000-year-old paintings discovered on the walls of the Chauvet Cave in France in 1994. The cave, which Herzog calls "one of the greatest discoveries in the history of human culture," is the perfect setting for the director's fatalistic philosophizing: It's light on air and space and heavy with metaphor, art, nature, and death. Like Chauvet itself, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is both beautiful and oppressive; you marvel at the artistry of the paintings covering the cave's walls while at the same time mourning the incomprehensible distance between the people who painted them and ourselves. Score another one for cruel, indifferent nature and for Herzog, its undisputed cinematic champion.

---

Friday, March 18, 5:30pm, Alamo Lamar B