The cultural significance of art work is whatever that is, what we arbitrarily give as value to those paintings, subjectively we are ought to create it's meaning, the paintings of the Chauvet caves in the South of France, doubtlessly have survived the test of time and it is easy to acknowledge them and to tell on their importance on art history, but what can we do or say as confronted by a Forty Thousand year cave painting that is particularly beautiful and impressive by so many aspects.
"In a forbidden recess of the cave, there's a footprint of an eight- year-old boy next to the footprint of a wolf. Did a hungry wolf stalk the boy? Or did they walk together as friends? Or were their tracks made thousands of years apart? We'll never know." One of the Herzog's narrations on the movie that goes to show a lot about the role of imagination and narration on the making of history. The imagination also has skin and bones, it has happened also. Any work of art confront us with something to recognize, something to get, I guess most people can find themselves on indifference, or angst or anger, when confronted by an work of art that rings no bells, that pulls no confrontation, that leaves us there, staring, in the riddle of our own souls.
It is important to notice that all the archaeologists, the art curators, the historians, even with all the technology, that enables them to make all the assumptions on history, on how their lives were, on what were the reasons for the paintings and how they were produced. We are still driven to a fundamental questions, that might be key to understanding the importance of art in our modern culture and the understanding of the power that imagination and art plays in weave the very own fabric of our lives.
And that what it is left to do for all the people interviewed in the movie, fantasies of understanding, what this knowing that we share it is all about, and each one of them in their own uniqueness make their story about it, through a variety of means, the nose and smelling being one of the funniest ones. I am not sure if a traditional history TV channel would be able to show all the quirks of it's own subject matter, it takes courage to undermine and to be honest and frank on what it is being filmed, and that It is one of the characteristics that must be valued under the making of a documentary.
It is Herzog methods, or just his personality, he can pick and choose what it is of more interest to him, he deliberately says and uses what got his attention, and drives the interviews to a sphere where he can confront people with his own sense of humor and his own inquisitions and interests of what he is trying to show, he is capable to show us, how laughable we can be, we can see bluntly the mechanisms that he uses when he asks for the archaeologist to not go get the sphere and asks him if he thought he could kill a horse with it.
The idea that the cave man were of a different soul by the ex-circus man and archaeologist, that they had a different perspective on life, a different way understanding it, and the same for seeing and doing the art work that they have made. It reminded me a similar story I have heard about this indigenous person in a forest in Brazil, and he was very concerned on making fire, because soon the sun was going to set, the researches who wanted to walk as much as they could during daytime were not that worried of getting wood to make fire, one of the researcher tells that he them used his lighter to make the fire, and that in just one second there it was, this simple act somehow, this whole culture condensed in this little technology, were able in the indigenous eyes to make his whole world fall apart.
So, when Herzog highlighted by what at first seen absurd and delirious connections on the albino crocodiles and the nuclear power plants, are really scary for the poetic and real inquiry that it is trying to make, simply by showing things that are actually there and putting one and one together and pushing us into seen, what a huge, and laughable project of society and humanity we can be. How far have we moved?
All and all I think Herzog it is pretty funny, and I will finish with one more peace of narration he delivers as seeing some ancient human sculptures, "there seems to have existed a visual convention extending all the way beyond Baywatch".
"In a forbidden recess of the cave, there's a footprint of an eight- year-old boy next to the footprint of a wolf. Did a hungry wolf stalk the boy? Or did they walk together as friends? Or were their tracks made thousands of years apart? We'll never know." One of the Herzog's narrations on the movie that goes to show a lot about the role of imagination and narration on the making of history. The imagination also has skin and bones, it has happened also. Any work of art confront us with something to recognize, something to get, I guess most people can find themselves on indifference, or angst or anger, when confronted by an work of art that rings no bells, that pulls no confrontation, that leaves us there, staring, in the riddle of our own souls.
It is important to notice that all the archaeologists, the art curators, the historians, even with all the technology, that enables them to make all the assumptions on history, on how their lives were, on what were the reasons for the paintings and how they were produced. We are still driven to a fundamental questions, that might be key to understanding the importance of art in our modern culture and the understanding of the power that imagination and art plays in weave the very own fabric of our lives.
And that what it is left to do for all the people interviewed in the movie, fantasies of understanding, what this knowing that we share it is all about, and each one of them in their own uniqueness make their story about it, through a variety of means, the nose and smelling being one of the funniest ones. I am not sure if a traditional history TV channel would be able to show all the quirks of it's own subject matter, it takes courage to undermine and to be honest and frank on what it is being filmed, and that It is one of the characteristics that must be valued under the making of a documentary.
It is Herzog methods, or just his personality, he can pick and choose what it is of more interest to him, he deliberately says and uses what got his attention, and drives the interviews to a sphere where he can confront people with his own sense of humor and his own inquisitions and interests of what he is trying to show, he is capable to show us, how laughable we can be, we can see bluntly the mechanisms that he uses when he asks for the archaeologist to not go get the sphere and asks him if he thought he could kill a horse with it.
The idea that the cave man were of a different soul by the ex-circus man and archaeologist, that they had a different perspective on life, a different way understanding it, and the same for seeing and doing the art work that they have made. It reminded me a similar story I have heard about this indigenous person in a forest in Brazil, and he was very concerned on making fire, because soon the sun was going to set, the researches who wanted to walk as much as they could during daytime were not that worried of getting wood to make fire, one of the researcher tells that he them used his lighter to make the fire, and that in just one second there it was, this simple act somehow, this whole culture condensed in this little technology, were able in the indigenous eyes to make his whole world fall apart.
So, when Herzog highlighted by what at first seen absurd and delirious connections on the albino crocodiles and the nuclear power plants, are really scary for the poetic and real inquiry that it is trying to make, simply by showing things that are actually there and putting one and one together and pushing us into seen, what a huge, and laughable project of society and humanity we can be. How far have we moved?
All and all I think Herzog it is pretty funny, and I will finish with one more peace of narration he delivers as seeing some ancient human sculptures, "there seems to have existed a visual convention extending all the way beyond Baywatch".
