Werner Herzog: On The Charge
by Matt Strachan
Cave of Forgotten Dreams uses 3D technology to full shuddering effect as it delves into France’s Chauvet Cave to shine a light on paintings 35,000 years old and the awe of humanness itself. Director Werner Herzog talks to DFG about Jacques Cousteau, WrestleMania and lowering his head to charge.
Matt Strachan: Could you talk through the genesis of the film and your decision to use 3D for the first time?
Werner Herzog: I’d always had an affinity to cave paintings, which somehow dates back to my adolescence. I was always fascinated and I didn't even know about the discovery of Chauvet Cave until something like a year and a half ago. The production company Creative Differences, with whom I did Grizzly Man and a film in Antarctica [Encounters at the End of the World], told me about an article in the New Yorker - a very intelligent article by a very fine writer, Judith Thurman. They asked if I'd be interested in doing a film about cave paintings and I said of course, immediately. I don't have to read the article… Chauvet Cave is one of the greatest discoveries in the entire cultural history of the human race – a truly great event.
I’ve always been a mild sceptic of 3D, and none of my films so far should have been in 3D, but the moment I saw the cave without any camera (I was allowed in there once) it was immediately evident, and it was imperative to do it in 3D. I knew I was probably the only one to ever be allowed in there with cameras. And it’s not that there are flat walls with paintings – it’s a complete drama of bulges and niches, protrusions and undulations. That, per se, would not necessitate 3D, but since artists utilised it and incorporated the three-dimensionality in their paintings, that made it obvious.
MS: How did you balance the demands of shooting in 3D with the severe restrictions imposed by the cave?
WH: The restrictions, let’s face it, were not a caprice by the Government or by the scientists. The most famous of all caves so far – Lascaux in the Dordogne region – had to be shut down completely because too many people were inside and human breath somehow created a mold on the walls that they couldn’t really completely control. Altamira in the Pyrenees also had to be shut down, so it’s a real problem. This cave [Chauvet] was a perfect time capsule, sealed for over 20,000 years because the rock face collapsed and sealed the entrance. So when you go into the cave, all of a sudden you see tracks of cave bears next to you. And I mean from time immemorial – back maybe from 40,000 years ago. And you know this is an animal that became extinct 20,000 years ago. So it is evident. You don’t step onto the footprint of a cave bear and superimpose your Adidas shoe print, you just don’t do it.
Of course filming in 3D is much more complicated. For each type of shot you have to reconfigure the camera - it’s a highly precise mechanical procedure to bring the lenses closer together for a closer shot, and the lenses have to squint slightly. So it’s high precision mechanics, and on this metal walkway in semi-darkness you have to perform very quickly. We were only allowed six days in the cave, and each day only four hours. So you have to be fast. We were only allowed four people in there, so you really have to know who is doing what. A clear, very precise mechanism of behaviour in technical tasks.
MS: The music in the film is superb, and yet the silence of the cave seems to be one of its most powerful aspects. How did you reconcile this when directing the score?
WH: Well that was something I started to anticipate way before I started shooting. I heard from the scientists that the silence itself is really stunning. When you hold your breath it’s so silent that you can hear your own heart beat, and you sometimes hear a few drops of water. I spoke to Ernst Reijseger - a very ingenious, great composer – and I said we have to come from utter silence and a few drops of water, and then you hear some heartbeat and out of nowhere, out of nothing – music. Out of this depth of silence, music has to emerge. Go to work!
MS: There was a sense, particularly in the middle of the film, of a desire to escape the cave and engage with people and places of the here-and-now.
WH: Of course you start to feel claustrophobic, and it’s good for the audience to venture out to get fresh air, to look at people who are trying to describe and scientifically investigate the cave. And even venturing out some 400 km away where you had physical evidence of human beings of the same time, because Chauvet Cave was never inhabited by humans. It was partially inhabited by cave bears who would hibernate. But humans, we know, never lived in there - they only put the paintings in there. And what is also quite strange - they put the paintings away from the entrance, which was fairly wide in prehistoric times, and although some dim light must have spread pretty far into the cave, the painting starts where it was definitely completely pitch dark. Very strange.
I think it has to do with storytelling that the film starts from outside and the landscape, and then the first entry into the cave like Jacques Cousteau snorkelling down, then being more and more precise. But after a certain while, and you have to see it as a storyteller, you get the feeling – enough, let’s take a fresh breath, let’s step outside, let’s talk to human beings. And of course what some of the scientists tell you make you see the images with new and different eyes - just knowing the kind of abysses of time that are incomprehensible for us. We know that somebody made a charcoal painting of, let’s say, a reindeer and someone else completed it. Through radiocarbon dating we know this other person completed it 5,000 years later. So it’s kind of stunning, and you look at things in a different way when you know that.
MS: As fact and fiction continue to blend, how do you see the role of today’s documentary filmmaker?
WH: Oh, there is no distinction. Many of my documentaries – they’re called documentaries but, let’s face it, they are feature films in disguise. It’s this old rumination on fact-driven movies – it’s an old argument ad nauseum about cinema vérité. Let’s face it, cinema vérité is the answer of the ‘60s. I was at a festival – I think it was either Rotterdam or Amsterdam – and there was a panel discussing documentaries and trends in documentaries with about 300 people in the audience, most of them filmmakers. A young woman next to me kept raving about her style in documentary, trying to be just the fly on the wall. Everybody applauded and I just couldn’t take it any more – I grabbed the microphone and said we shouldn’t be the fly on the wall. We are filmmakers - we should be the hornet that goes out and stings, and everybody was not pleased at all. I grabbed the microphone again and shouted into this whole convention - Happy New Year, losers! So there’s my answer to cinema vérité.
No, let’s say with a little bit more intelligence - we are undergoing a huge and massive change in our perception of realities, and it’s because we have a phenomenal explosion of tools that change realities – reality TV, the internet, virtual realities, digital effects in cinema, Photoshop. And I include WrestleMania – invented fake fights and on and on and on. So it is a huge massive onslaught on our sense of reality and we have to find an answer to it. We have to respond, do a different type of movie than, let’s say, 50 years ago, which is still lingering everywhere. You see it in TV stations – the network executives, they all talk like this. And I just lower my head and charge.
MS: Your Rogue Film School held its third seminar in London over the weekend.
WH: Yes, they’re at irregular intervals and I’m holding them wherever I like to do it. So the next one might be in the southern Sahara, or in the Scottish Highlands in an open field. But, of course, I’m normally looking for a hotel not too far from an airport where I have some sort of a conference room. Most of the students this weekend – I would say 80% or 75% - were not from Great Britain. They came from Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Latvia, Poland and even a woman from the central Sahara.
In the last two decades or so, even earlier but it has accelerated, there is a huge avalanche coming at me of young filmmakers who want to either work with me and be my assistant, or who are trying to learn from me. And when I say huge avalanche, I mean it. In a way I seem to be a point of orientation for them, and I’m trying to give an organised answer to this. But of course I’m watching hundreds of short films that they send me – I do the invitations all on my own, and I run it, basically, all on my own.
MS: What are you working on now?
WH: Well I’m just finishing a film - Death Row - mostly about death row inmates in Texas and Florida. I have to finish that one and then a couple of feature films, but I try to not think about it and see the world in a tunnel view – I have to finish that one first before I open the floodgates.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is released on Friday 25th March. Read Matt Strachan's review.