Werner Herzog bridges a gap 30,000 years long when he takes us to southern France’s Chauvet cave in his latest documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This site of the oldest known cave paintings was discovered in 1994, and had been sealed for about 20,000 years pior. This allowed its paintings to remain fresh and for glorious champagne pink calcite to grow and sparkle upon nearly every surface. Shortly after its discovery, it was sealed once again by the French government.
In true Herzog fashion, he plows through obstacles to show us the unknown and unseen. We appreciate the journey all the more after he outlines the numerous restrictions to shooting, such as the film crew’s confinement to a two-foot wide walkway. He interviews the charming, often animated research team. They shed light on the purpose, techniques, and merits of the paintings. Most eerily, we see the path of a single cave painter whose handprints consistently show a crooked pinky finger throughout the cave. The Paleolithic painters used the rounded walls of the caves as dynamic canvasses and Herzog astutely chooses 3D to enhance their artistic choice. We witness the film crew’s discovery and the reverence for the people who displayed artistic sensitivity so mind-bogglingly long ago. The doc is filled with poetic moments, as Herzog probes into the origins of art, humanness, spirituality, and the continuing evolution of life on earth, which he illustrates in an odd but thought-provoking postscript of albino alligators swimming in nuclear plant water.
You might spot him in the 5th Avenue 50s straddling his bike, sporting a blue jacket (which is actually a Parisian street sweeper uniform), as he snaps a photo of some dazzling ensemble. But whether or not you can catch this 82-year-old in real life, see “Bill Cunningham New York,” the documentary portrait of the city’s most beloved street fashion photographer.
The doc follows Cunningham on his bike, weaving precariously helmetless in and out of midtown traffic. We see him in The New York Times office where his photos are distilled into the weekly style roundup “On The Street” and the high society event page “Evening Hours.” Interviews with New York fashion staples Anna Wintour, Patrick MacDonald, Annie Flanders, and more round out this sweet peak into Cunningham’s life. The central paradox at play is that he documents and works alongside the most glamorous people and institutions in one of the world’s fashion capitals, but he himself leads an ascetic life. He attends church every Sunday, eats few and modest meals, has about two changes of clothes, and lives in what looks like a janitor’s closet filled with file cabinets of his own negatives. We see him repair his ripped rain poncho with masking tape. He’s not so unaware as to not laugh at himself, but he’d never be wasteful for the sake of pride.
Some of the best scenes take place at the Times, where Bill and his assistant design the layout of his “On the Street” page. “Switch these two,” is the incessant phrase over the shoulder of the openly (though affably) frustrated lumberjack of a man accommodating the man’s whims click and drag after click and drag. These odd couple-y moments highlight Cunningham’s creaky methods being double-timed by a new generation of digital cameras and Photoshop. But Cunningham has been doing it his way since he got home from World War II and no one’s stopping him.
Cunningham seamlessly embodies the whimsy of a child and the wisdom of an old man. The duality allows him the moxie to embrace a single, simple passion and to do it everyday for over 60 years with monk-like devotion. To play a straight game in New York, he reflects, is like “Don Quixote fighting windmills.” And it’s true. Life can be tough here and we compromise ourselves to make ends meet or to roll with a certain crowd. But Bill knows neither greed nor opportunism. In the humblest possible way he demonstrates that it’s possible to honor your passion by keeping it the top priority, if you’re willing to improvise. If you let that be the great challenge, rather than a daily grind you fall into, life can be simple and beautiful.
