THE CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D

Werner Herzog is, hands down, the most exciting director working in cinema today. Exciting because he makes connections between emotions, sounds and images that no-one else would begin to think of, let alone have the audacity to put on screen. His films vary from horror to documentary to cop thrillers - that is they vary by genre. But his films are always, everywhere, Herzog - obsessed with the power and cruelty of nature, human nature foremost - and wonderfully obsessed with the power of storytelling - filmed in a kind of gonzo style and yet with perfect control over the medium. For Herzog, mere truth should never be allowed to get in the way of a good story - from a deeper more profound truth. And neither should stand in the way of a lingering shot of a lizard!

Herzog's latest film is a documentary that uses small 3D HD cameras to take us inside a famous cave at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in Ardeche. This cave contains the oldest known cave paintings, beautifully preserved by a delicate ecosystem - so delicate that ordinary tourists are rarely allowed inside. As a result, Herzog's film is the only chance most of us will get to see these beautifully detailed, vivid images. On one level, the documentary is conventional enough. Herzog shows us the paintings and interviews various members of the scientific team, who explain their significance. But nothing is ever that straightforward with Herzog. For he brings with him his childlike wonder at the beauty of the paintings - at early man's use of the curve of the stone and visual techniques to portray motion - and at the very idea that he is sharing a space across time with his earliest ancestors. Who else would see cave paintings and describe them as a sort of proto-cinema, or make a connection between monochrome paintings and Fred Astaire? Some of this might sound hokey, but the sonorous particularity of Herzog's voice and the earnestness with which he delivers these ideas is as compelling as the paintings themselves.

For let us be clear - while this is a documentary - it has the same strange stillness, macabre other-worldliness - as his recent film MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE?, complete with DP Peter Zeitlinger's tableaux vivants. And even more audacious, the final five minutes are a flight of fantasy, except that the content - too deliciously bizarre to spoil here - really exists!

What can one say but that the Chauvet caves could have been photographed by many directors, and they would have looked wonderful. But only Herzog makes them seem vivid, connected to us, and magical.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D played Toronto 2010 and Berlin 2011. It was released in the UK in March 2011 and will be released in Germany in November. The film is being released in 2D and 3D. to my mind the 3D is more engrossing but the dimness of the image, in an already dim-lit cave, is a deep disadvantage.

MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE?

You go in to a movie directed by Werner Herzog and produced by David Lynch with a certain expectation of Weird. You come out thinking, “What just happened here?” You struggle with your own feelings – did you enjoy the film? Is that even a possible outcome here? Maybe it’s just about levels of being unnerved? We’re not in Kansas anymore.

The story is simple enough. Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon – in serious danger of being typecast) is an actor who has become so obsessed with Elektra that he has murdered his over-protective mother. His girlfriend knew he was becoming increasingly unhinged, but the fact that she was with him at all, given his weird emotional tics, shows that she’s no judge of character. But then again, a Herzog film is often peopled with characters who are weird without being sinister – without there being a narrative purpose to it. Udo Kier’s theatre director is certainly strange and bizarre and unnerving, but he’s not actually menacing. The same applies to Willem Defoe’s detective, who appears to be immune to the weirdness that engulfs him, and this immunity makes him as strange as the man he’s staking out. At let’s not even discuss the craziest character of all – Brad’s insane ostrich-farming Uncle Ted (Brad Dourif). It’s as though Herzog is making a point about the inherent oddity of suburban life. Yes, he’s saying, this shit may seem unutterably weird to you viewers, but if you look beyond those white picket fences, this is really the level of oddity on which we’re operating. And that brings us firmly into the realm of David Lynch.

And so you end up with a film that combines both Herzogian and Lynchian strangeness. An obsession with mutated chickens; aggressive ostriches; a random interlude in Peru; and endless tableaux vivants; put us firmly in Herzog territory. The casting of the default-crazy Grace Zabriskie; the inclusion of a milk-sop girlfriend; and the fetishisation of a food; put us firmly in Lynch territory.

How can you respond to a movie in which the plot is propelled by a murder and an abduction, but basically nothing happens? In which every crazy character is trumped by another? This movie isn’t so much an empathetic experience as a spectacle. I still can’t tell you if I enjoyed it. But I know I won’t forget it in a hurry.

Additional tags: Ernst Reijseger, Loretta Devine, Brad Dourif

MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE? played Venice and Toronto 2009 and was released in Portugal earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and Italy and was released on DVD in the US last week.

Londn Film Fest Day 10 - BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

Werner Herzog's remake of the 1992 Harvey Keitel flick BAD LIEUTENANT is insane. Herzog is basically inviting us to join with his actors in laughing at the crime thriller genre. To say that the performances are hammy, or that the direction is off-the-wall, doesn't even begin to capture it. Problem is, with everything subordinated to a cheap laugh, there's nothing to hold our attention for the two hour run-time.

The original flick was directed by Abel Ferrara. It was a gritty, sleazy exploitation film about a New York cop strung out on drugs and booze, investigating the rape of a nun, whose forgiveness of her attacker, the cop can't understand. It was down and dirty, sure, but it was serious, after its own fashion. I was expecting a similar tone to this remake. After all, the new flick is written by William Finkelstein, whose credits include NYPD Blue, Law & Order and Murder One. But no.

Nic Cage stars as a corrupt cop, self-medicating for back pain with smack and crack he hustles from people he's taking down. His girlfriend (Eva Mendes) is a hooker, he's running up serious gambling debts, and he's trying to bring down a local drug baron for executing a Senegalese pusher and his family. The cop claims that there's no limit to what you can achieve when you concentrate, which is like a kind of insane joke at the centre of the film. Because just when the cop should be interrogating someone, or investigating a crime scene, Herzog decides to spend a few minutes in extreme close-ups of iguanas set to a hammy version of "Please release me". In one shot, you can actually see Cage in the background cracking up. By the time Cage's character is ruffling the feathers of a "connected" client of his hooker girlfriend in Biloxi, the movie has truly jumped the shark into "just for laughs" territory. I mean, you can admire Herzog's insanity all you like, but what really is the difference between this flick and SNAKES ON A PLANE?

Some reviewers are going to try and sell you the idea that this movie is so ludicrous it's brilliant. Nope. If this were directed by anyone other than Herzog, they'd be calling it an over-long pastiche B-movie and giving it one star. Don't believe the hype.

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF NEW ORLEANS played Venice, Telluride, Toronto and London 2009. It opened this autumn in Italy, Greece and Israel. It opens on November 6th in Romania, on November 20th in the US, on December 2nd in Belgium, on January 8th in Sweden, on January 15th in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and on March 3rd in France.

London Film Fest Day 10 - RESCUE DAWN

A decade ago, Werner Herzog made an astounding documentary called LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY. It featured an extraordinary and admirable man called Dieter Dengler. Dengler was a small kid in Germany during WW2 and remembers locking eyes with a bomber pilot. From that point he had a passion to fly, and as Germany had no airforce, he became an American citizen and joined the Navy. He was shot down over Laos, taken prisoner, but made a miraculous escape thanks to his own ingenuity but most especially his ceaseless optimism and sheer obstinacy. The documentary was horrific, enchanting, moving, inspiring - everything a film can hope to be.

Ten years later, Herzog returns to this subject with his fictional account of the same story, starring the ever-brilliant Christian Bale as Dieter and Steve Zahn as his fellow prisoner, Duane. We follow them through their horrific experiences, filmed on location and with an authenticity that only Herzog can create. Bale is obviously great as Dieter - he picks up a lot of Dieter's vocal inflections and almost manic optimism. Zahn is an absolute revelation in a quiet, dramatic role, but praise is also due to Jeremy Davies who plays a slippery, hippie-ish POW.

This is a very fine film but I couldn't help wondering why it existed. It puts flesh on the bones of the story given in LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY but actually is only part of the story. The most affecting part of LITTLE DIETER is seeing the impact on Dengler years after the imprisonment. The fact that he sleeps better knowing that he has a fully stacked fridge and supplies under the floor-boards, for example. The first best solution is to watch both the movie and the doc, in that order, to see events re-enacted and then understand the aftermath. But if you are unwilling to commit so much time, I would actually go for the doc for its completeness of vision. This is not to under-sell the movie, but to acknowledge it's more limited field of vision.

RESCUE DAWN played Toronto 2007 and London 2007. It opened in the US, the Netherlands and Israel earlier this year and is currently on release in Finland. It opens in Australia and the UK on November 23rd and in Brazil on December 7th. It opens in Russia on February 21st 2008.

Pantheon movie of the month - LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY

LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY is an outstanding documentary by Werner Herzog. It's outstanding primarily because it's about an extraordinary man called Dieter Dengler. Dengler grew up impoverished and fatherless in war-time Germany and escapes a harsh life to fulfil his dream of becoming a pilot. Consigned to the US army carpool he puts himself through college so he can become a navy pilot only to be shot down in Laos. Imprisoned and tortured by the Cong, he stages a brave escape and is eventually miraculously rescued weighing only 85 pounds and without his best friend. What is amazing about Dieter is not simply that he endures and survives trials that would break most men. It is that he does all this without becoming a haunted and embittered man. He seems thankful and happy for all that he has even in the worst of circumstances. His attitude toward life is admirable and nothing short of inspirational.

Werner Herzog brings empathy to this documentary. He knows what it is to see horrific hunger in defeated Germany. He also know what it is to experience near-madness in the jungle. Perhaps most importantly, he has the arrogance to shape the story to enhance and concentrate its message. For instance, while all the substance and insight is true, Herzog unabashedly stages scenes and rehearses apparently impromptu dialogue. Perhaps I phrased that incorrectly. It is precisely BECAUSE Herzog takes these dramatic liberties that the viewer is allowed to perceive the substantive truth. Finally, of course, unlike Michael Moore, Herzog has the audacity to be quite honest about his artistic shaping of the documentary evidence. And that - the honest artistic interplay with the brilliant source material - that makes LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY - a masterpiece.

LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY was originally released in 1997 and is available on DVD.