Wendell Ricketts The images of the 30 or 40-thousand-year-old drawings inside the Grotte Chauvet are absolutely stunning, spell-binding, wondrous. If you're the sort of person who is moved and amazed by this kind of thing, then this is truly your kind of thing! What mars the documentary are three elements: 1) an almost total lack of archaeological/anthropological explanation (and I don't count the pony-tailed ex-circus juggler-turned-archaeologist who barely seems to understand Herzog's ridiculous questions and does his best to respond but still ends up sounding like a French Milhouse Van Houten; 2) a musical soundtrack that is grating, repetitive, irritating, over-the-top, inappropriate, and just plain preposterous (flights of celestial choruses drone as the camera pans over the paintings on the cave walls); and 3) Herzog's inane, pretentious, Euro-trash narration, which comes in at about the intellectual level of a thoroughly stoned junior high student. Just wait for the last few minutes when you get to the part about the albino crocodiles and see if you don't hoot with laughter. The Chauvet Cave is extraordinary; Herzog is a farce.

Tad Pole . . . (we thought them, therefore they were), one would expect some startling revelations from a film entitled CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. While it's true that writer\director\narrator Werner Herzog digresses into irradiated albino alligators about 86 minutes into this 90-minute film, this seemingly drug-induced Non Sequitar says more about the state of HIS mind than it does about the FLINTSTONES'. Now, when "Chauvet Cave" was rediscovered 20 years ago in France, it would have been actual news IF the original explorers had found paintings of UFO's, or depictions of AK-47's, or blueprints for pyramids, or perhaps one of Shakepeare's sonnets plastered on its walls. Instead, the interior of this cavern (which had been sealed off by a rock slide for 10,000 years) contained about what you'd expect: crude graffiti scrawled by male chauvinist vandals, mildewed and smeared by 100 centuries of the sort of water damage plaguing homeowners with "wet" basements. Instead of hiring "art" restorers to salvage this as a potential tourist attraction (think Mammoth Cave or Carlsbad Caverns here in the U.S.), the French are planning to clone the hole and its decayed scribblings for a created-from-scratch theme park. Good luck with that! (Herzog SHOULD have made a movie about the dude briefly shown here who proves the tune to the STAR-SPANGLED BANNER was the world's first song: Maybe on the Seventh Day, God said, "Play Ball!")

prizm4 I was so disappointed by this documentary. The subject itself is amazing and I was eagerly looking forward to finding out more about the cave. But this was horrible. There is not much science here or much information about the people that left these paintings. What did they look like? What were their habits? Have similar paintings been found? This documentary should've been half as long given the sparse information provided.Instead, you get Werner Herzog (the writer/director) talking pretentious dribble about spirits and how the scientists supposedly want to leave the cave after a few hours because they feel they're being watched by the original inhabitants. I highly doubt the scientists said that. At one point he tells all the scientists to stop talking so that we can "listen to the sound of the cave" and "maybe hear our own heartbeats". Yeah Werner, why don't we all hold hands and say a prayer too? Anyway, instead of hearing a couple water droplets (if anything), he instead plays grating violin/cello music on the film for two minutes over the top of images from the cave. So much for listening to the silence. Oh and then he inserts a sound effect of a heartbeat *facepalm*.Not only that, but Werner Herzog's film direction is awkward and embarrassing for the people he interviews (he does this in his other documentaries as well). You know that awkward moment after everyone has laughed at a joke and there's a lull in the conversation? Or after someone is done talking to the camera, they get this look on their face like "So are you done filming?" - Well Werner makes sure you see those sorts of moments. Or he'll have his subjects just stare at the camera while holding a photo or something. It's extremely unflattering to the people interviewed.Oh yeah, and he interviews some perfumer (yes, that's right, a guy that makes perfume), and this guy goes around smelling cracks in rocks to see if he can "smell" other parts of the cave. Here I am begging for some genuine science and he's interviewing fruitcakes.Seriously you will wish NOVA, History, or NatGeo got the rights to film this cave instead. A documentary by those groups would've been far more informative.The only reason to watch this is to see images of the cave. There are a few amazing crumbs of science in this film (they do talk about a couple artifacts found), but it's like eating a potato chip when you're starving for a full meal.

lmcclenton Scientist guessing and using there imagination is not work. This movie has nothing but guesses and a lot of fiction. Non-sense. to have a previous circus juggler now get promoted to a scientist and an ancient site being turned into a tourist site is ridiculous. No information on the tools they used to paint!?! and no engravings?!?. It absolutely primal. I enjoyed the music but other than that it seem too unbelievable, It doesn't seem to really have any substance for real historians. Now if you want to be entertained I suggest the library. The black markings were made by what?? and the cave the remained sealed for 10,000 years with the deterioration.