Review of Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) by Ned I — 28 Nov 2011

I have one major quibble with this film - The use of audio. Herzog drowns the images of the cave with contemporary classical music.

This irritated me a lot, as the music distracted me from the astounding images in the cave. Also, given the time these cave paintings were created, the music seemed ill suited to a subject matter 'unquantifiable' by contemporary musical language/the contemporary cultural mind.

In my opinion, the natural audio of the cave, or at least quieter, less frequent, less heavy handed music, could have let the mind concentrate significantly more on the environment of the cave and the paintings, and in turn be enveloped by said environment.

(I presume this because the one time the director decides to leave us look at these paintings without music, for about 5 or 10 seconds, it was wonderful. That fleeting moment, when the alien noise left and you could hear the background noises, and stare at this amazing thing in front of you, you felt truly immersed in the cave of forgotten dreams.).

This 'lack of enveloping' due to intrusive music (and artificial introduction of sound effects such as heartbeats) is made all the more frustrating by the great effort the director makes in creating an immersive experience visually (i.e. the use of 3D - an excellent idea that pays dividends when appreciating the contours of the cave/paintings).

The visuals are all there but they are drowned out.

In my opinion a lack of music (or a lack of music telling us how to frame/appreciate these images) could have unleashed the viewers imagination... the most potent of cinematic tools if ever there was one. The lack of intrusive music could have relaxed the brain and let the imagination flourish/wander, as it tries to comprehend the mindset of humanity 30,000 years ago, and how such humanity concieved/percieved the world they existed in.

Also I feel they should have used subtitles instead of dubbed translation when interviewing the scientistswho examine the cave, as the dubbing drowned out their original voice and essentially put a barrier between our appreciation of these interesting characters, (characters you can tell Herzog is fond of).