Film Reflection

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

My initial reaction to the film Cave of Forgotten Dreams was oddly enough a bit of “déjà vu”, because in high school I actually went on a trip to France, and though we obviously did not visit the particular cave featured in the movie, the caves do look quite similar. The surrounding area as well seemed like a similar portion of France, and in fact, we even later in the same trip visited the recreation of Lascaux Cave, which I was reminded of when seeing the cave paintings.

Like for many, the mystery of cave paintings and the relative skill with which they were created are what draws me personally into ancient art. The mystery and wonder lay not only in seeing something that was put into place unfathomable amounts of time ago, at least, unimaginable for my 20 year old self, but also in simply trying to understand why such paintings would have been made to begin with. Given that these are some of the very few remains from so long ago, the best we can really do is guess and imagine.

The film, in my opinion, did quite a good job of capturing that sense of wonder, awe, mystery, and just a little bit of that far-more-significance-than-you-will-ever-achieve sense I got when seeing similar cave paintings. Even though some portions of it were slower, I also think that it covered a great deal of fascinating and diverse information on something that I had never really known that much about in such detail.