Kevin's Watch

For anyone who has not read about this 'project', the director Werner Herzog (forgive my spelling if it's wrong) was given acces to the Chauvet caves in central France to record on film the oldest known cave art (30 to 25 thousand years ago) known to date. It was a privelage to see this film.

I have never understood why, within days of the discovery in the 1970's (I think) the french government closed the site to public acess and from that time to this only a very few people each year have ever been allowed into the cave to view the art. Now I know. The place revealed in the film is so fragile, so delicate in it's astounding beauty that to allow it's inevitable destruction by open public viewing is too much to even contemplate. That we have been given this rare chance to see the marvels of the cave is an opportunity not - I repeat - not to be missed.

Now the use of 3D technology employed in the film was for me initially a bit of a turn off until I saw the film itself. The very 'non-planar' surface of the cave walls themselves (ie the lumps and bumps, the uneveness of the surface) has been utilised by the artists (and I use that word with it's full modern meaning) to embue thier images with a life and vitality that matches anything produced by subsequent history, right up to our own day. The technology could have been invented for this film alone and it would have been money well spent. I doubt it will ever be put to better use. Through it's magic we see those vibrant images come to life before our eyes and we know that those men and women who sat here, all those years ago, were people we could have talked, laughed and cried with.

And the art itself. I can't tell you of all the wonderfull things the cave shows - the 'Lion Panel', the 'Water hole', the Cave-Bear skull Alter - but imagine this if you will.

A man with a crooked finger sits with his paint bowl and brush by his side and contemplates the slightly uneven surface before his eyes. He is deep underground and the only light thrown on the wall is from that of a fire that burns behind and to his left hand side. What he intends to do, he has one chance to get right so there is a need for calm here. After a period of ......... (for what meaning has time down in this place) he rises to his feet and in one uninterupted arc of motion the rude brush is in his hand and on the wall - and his work is done. He stands back and allows a slow release of breath through his nostrils. He is satisfied. His gift to us, to all that follow, is a single uninterupted line of 6 feet in lenth, performed in one stroke. It shows his brother in life and death - a perfect silouhette of a fully grown mountain lion.

I'm not proud to say that I don't have much time for 'the modern world' and there are times when I feel that the earth will not be much worse off when we have eventually rendered it beyond the point where we humans can survive. This film has the power to change that and make me think - at least for a while - that "Yes, maybe we do have something of value to offer after all."

Saw this film again last night [alas not in 3D this time] and it remains a mesmerising experience. Why, when I look at these images do I feel closer to the people who made them than to the majority of the people of my own time. It's like the images touch some deep point in you that makes you say 'Yes - this is how it was meant to be! This is in some way 'right'.' This could be because the at point at which the paintings were made, we were still living the life to which we had been adapted for millenia, and the paintings somehow convey this steadier existence when the boundries between things were not as fixed as they are now and there was no sharp division between the spiritual/mystical and the mundane. I don't know. Some of the films high points:-

We follow the passage of a particular man - the man with the crooked finger [on old break?] as he moves through the long cave painting here and there and leaving his mark.

We see the tracks of a boy and a wolf in the dirt floor [now fossilised in sparkling calcite crystals]. Did the hungry wolf track the boy, intent on his destruction or indeed did they pass that way a thousand years apart. Or just maybe, they walked side by side in friendship. We can never know the anser to this, but we can choose which one works for us.

A cave bear skull sits on a plinth, clearly positioned there, pointing toward the cave entrance. At the base of the plinth ashes suggestive of the burning of incence. Around this our forebears would have sat in contemplation of their guiding spirits.

The 'swipe' marks of the refeshing act of 'knocking off the ash' from the top of your burning torch can be seen on the passage ceiling above your head and to the side of you. And lo, on the floor beneath, the very ashes of the swipe that made those marks 32,000 years ago. A simple gesture brought through the corridors of time, from then to now.

And of course the paintings. The supreme skill of the man with the broken finger and his collegues [over 5000 years, for that is the time frame over which the paintings were created!] whe drew images that hum with life and movement, that preceeded the tecniques of the impressionists millenia before their arrival but achieved effects [using the natural shape of the walls and shadows cast by their fires] stagerring in both their complexity and beauty. ['juts' of rock used to greate images of animals in three dimensionl profile, and the use of multiple overlayed images to give the effect of movement almost like the first series of 'film frames' ever created]. Make no mistake - these were no 'daubers on walls'. These men and women would have sat alongside and Picasso and Van Gough and would not have been dimmed by their light. if you can do nothing else go to Wikipedia now. Study the paintings and weep.

You have my word Hashi - the effort will be worthwhile!

Interestingly the Chauvet Cave contains the oldest 'scene' painting as yet known. While the bulk of the paintings are of individual animals [often superimposed and overlayed in strange ways granted] there is one 'panel' which contains two rhinoceri that are clearly 'giving battle' to eachother. The development of 'scene' representation over simple [used advisedly] figurative representation represents a major advance.

I'm also of the opinion that the 150,000 years of modern man's existence prior to the development of written history would be a much richer and more complex affair than is currently given credit for. It is via cave painting and myth that we have our only window into this world - but I am convinced we would find wisdom and knowledge beyond our greatest expectation if we could but know. One thing I am absolutely sure off - if we seek to understand these works and the message they were intended to convey, then this will only ever be achieved by looking at the works [ie by total immersion in them as created by individuals with the same hopes and needs as us] rather than by analysing them [not to ignore the import of this as well].