Today we get a first glimpse at maverick filmmaker Werner Herzog’s new documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which will be released in 3D. You can watch it below. I am a huge fan of Herzog’s films and I think his documentary work is extraordinary, both visually and factually fascinating. His documentary work focuses now a lot on nature, starting with Grizzly Man, continuing with Encounters At the End of the World and now here with this.
The 3D is interesting to me, I’m no huge fan but this looks like the sort of film which belongs on an IMAX screen and perhaps in 3D. Herzog himself recently said of working in 3D:
Once you see the cave with your own eyes, you realize it had to be filmed in 3-D. I’ve never used the process in the 58 films I made before and I have no plans to do it ever again, but it was important to capture the intentions of the painters. Once you saw the crazy niches and bulges and rock pendants in the walls, it was obvious it had to be in 3-D.
His comments on the use of it in film also struck chord with my own feelings about the format:
We shouldn’t ever have a romantic comedy in 3-D, because we, the audience, have an emotional approach to the storytelling which leaves open lot of narrative possibilities. You wonder as you watch… We start to fantasize, which you could never do in 3-D, where you would be in the handcuffs of the technological effects. With cinema, your fantasies should always be free.
