If you've heard him talk, you know Werner Herzog is a great persuader.
But even he was surprised when he was allowed into Chauvet Cave in southern France. It was sealed off by fallen rock for more than 20,000 years, and it contains possibly the most miraculous, earliest known trove of prehistoric artwork on its walls. Only re-discovered in 1994, the site has been off-limits to the public (not to mention filmmakers) in order to preserve the delicate environment inside.
That is, until Herzog came along. The 68-year-old director of canonic films such as 1972's Aguirre, the Wrath of God and 1982's Fitzcarraldo, as well as acclaimed documentaries such as 2005's Grizzly Man, was approached by producer Erik Nelson to see if he was interested in trying to persuade the French government to grant access to Chauvet.
Herzog leapt at the chance. Unknown to Nelson, the German director had been fascinated with prehistoric art as a boy. And they didn't know that France's minister of culture was a Herzog fan,which helped the team ease the permits and approvals process for entry into the cave – including the right to shoot in 3-D to detail everything in the cave as minutely as possible.
The result, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, is actually owned by the French government, and Herzog charged the nominal fee of one euro for his work.
The film timetable was short but arduous. The crew was only allowed in the cave for four hours a day for one week, in order to protect the fragile interior, and the 3-D cameras had to be reassembled each time they went through the cave's tighter confines.
But the paintings themselves, depicting prehistoric mammals so artfully that they even suggest motion, has led Herzog to describe them a kind of "proto-cinema." And when he talks about his movie, opening Friday in Toronto with other Canadian cities to follow, the exhilaration he felt in the cave is still plain.
Describe your emotions during filming. Despite the otherworldly cave setting, you still had a movie to make.
Once in the cave, you have to perform, you have to deliver. Our time was extremely limited, and there were other restrictions – we could not step off the walkway, which was only two feet wide. So you really have to perform and deliver.
But there were unexpected surprises. Number one: I did not expect that the cave would be so beautiful, with crystal cathedrals of stalactites and stalagmites. The second surprise was the amount of bones and bear skulls. There are 4,000 bones in the cave. And they look completely fresh, although they date back 40,000 years, or maybe 50,000 years back in time.
All of this in an environment of crystalline air?
It was a pure time capsule. But for us as filmmakers, when you are in the cave after less than an hour, you felt dizzy because of all the carbon dioxide. There were people with us measuring the concentration. And there are safety precautions: There's an emergency box with oxygen masks.
Why has it taken so long for anyone to be allowed to film inside Chauvet cave?
The most famous cave, Lascaux [also in southern France], had to be shut down because too many people were entering it. The breath of too many tourists created a mould which is growing on the walls now. The cave was shut down categorically more than 20 years ago. The climate inside Chauvet Cave is very, very delicate. They are very careful in preserving the cave and not exposing it to human exhalations, human vapour and sweat.
Why make the task harder by shooting with cumbersome 3-D cameras?
Since we are probably the only ones ever to be allowed to film in there, I knew we had to do it in 3-D. The cave is not just a flat wall, with paintings on it. There's an incredible drama and dynamics of bulges and niches [in the walls] and how the artists used the bulge of rock for a hump of a charging bison, or a horse coming out of a niche. So it was obvious we had to do it in 3-D.
If viewed with flickering flame by prehistoric humans, would the motion effects in some of the artwork have had a spiritual element?
Yes, we cannot dismiss the speculation [that it was a spiritual site]. But everything we are doing to explain it will remain speculation.
But we can measure and pinpoint things. We know that a torch was swiped to rekindle the flame, and we know it was swiped exactly 28,000 years ago, because we have carbon dating for some of the fragments of charcoal.
For me the most stunning [example] is a painter painting a reindeer, but it's not complete. And then somebody else completes it, painting another one over it. We can date it, and they were 5,000 years apart.
This interview has been condensed and edited.