Rent Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Anyone want to see oldest paintings we know about on planet Earth? - Cave of Forgotten Dreams review by CP Customer

When it comes to some things I think the content is vastly more important than the technical or artistic merits, and that's certainly the case here. This is exclusive access to the oldest paintings man currently knows about - how could anyone not be intrigued by that?

Herzog admits that they were limited in terms of time, space, technology and even where they could film from and what lights they could use. So this was never going to be a cinematic masterpiece. That said, I think they did a superb job regardless and paid the paintings the appropriate amount of respect, making maximum use of the available light.

Just film of the paintings would have been enough for me, but it's accompanied by some lovely music, interviews with excavators and experts, and tied together with Herzog's very competent narration.

I was really grateful to be able to have such a good look at these paintings - what a rare privelege.

An awesome cave of fantastic importance - Cave of Forgotten Dreams review by JD

The extreme age of these sketches is so fantastic you cannot fail to be impressed. Cavemen capable of such lifelike drawings are so far from other non-human apes that I reconsidered their abilities. The film, the interviews and the commentary are dreadful. The modern man apparently more stupid than the caveman.

Caving with Herzog - Cave of Forgotten Dreams review by Johannes

There is dark, ancient life in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave of southern France: 30,000 years ago, stones were arranged in strange patterns on the floor; fires had been lit; and scrawled over the walls, hundreds of cave paintings were made, of horses, lions and butterflies. This is Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams – maybe his greatest example of poetic, ecstatic truth – where the dreams and imaginations of Aurignacian people have been preserved. Herzog's documentaries (which, nowadays, he is mostly known for) distil the existential fear and wonder of his earlier fiction features to extraordinary effect.