267) Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) Dir: Werner Herzog Date Released: April 29, 2011 Rating: 4/5
The stop-motion animation in the Jonze short was fun but that's about it. It doesn't make good use of its location in the sense that after watching the short, I still didn't understand why that book store was special.
The Herzog feature is however very impressive. I had previously read several essays about his films and his apolitical fascination with dreams. So going into Cave of Forgotten Dreams, I knew that Herzog prides himself on being a documentarian that cares more for ecstatic truths than he does for hard facts. But I'm only familiar with his recent films and, with the exception of Rescue Dawn, I hadn't previously been impressed with that approach. So I was glad when I finally connected with one of his documentaries. Cave's mystical eponymous setting lends itself to the kind of idle speculation and philosophizing that Herzog specializes in. And with the exception of the Albino alligators at the end, I actually bought the mad Austrian's out there theories about other-ness and why humans are compelled to absorb representations of ourselves as a means of filling the gaps in our collective unconscious. He expresses it better than I just did, thankfully.
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