MovieChat Forums > Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) Discussion > Albino Crocodiles

Albino Crocodiles

posted 13 years ago by KristinVS
35 replies | jump to latest

This part of the movie passed me by while I was thinking about the (fine) artistic quality of the some of the cave paintings featured. I will need to view the film again to try to understand Herzog's point. However, my own take is this: The world's climate has changed considerably since the cave paintings were made. So too, has the local ecology. Many of the species of animals depicted on the Chauvet Cave walls are now extinct. We are now facing another, more rapid climate change, but this one is in a large part caused by human activity. This too, is resulting in ecological changes that we are only beginning to witness and understand.

This quote from reviewer John DeSando prompted me to introduce this topic here:

" When you figure out his meaning of the doppelganging albino alligators, write me with your answer, for I'm still trying to figure it out."

Does anyone else have insight into this?
And are they albino alligators or crocodiles, for clarification?

[–] Serpa97 13 years ago

I was lost on the doppelganger aspect of the alligators, but as I understood it Herzog meant the mutant alligators as an allegory to ourselves. Such as the albino creatures are changed by the nuclear plants (I don't really think the nuclear plants are responsible for the alligators, but it was part of Herzog's point), we are so unlike the prehistoric people that we can never understand why they painted, what they felt, and what they meant to tell us.

[–] GrigoryGirl 13 years ago

I thought the albino crocodiles were adorable, but that wasn't really Herzog's point.

I love the film by the way. Saw it this evening. A masterpiece, one of Herzog's most moving films.

[–] bruce-129 13 years ago

I don't know ... can any of us really relate to what Picasso was thinking or felt, or Van Gogh. I think that comment was way overblown, it might be true, and it might be totally BS. The minds of people are not a we, or they. Not all of the people of that era had any interest in cave paintings perhaps. At least they did not have advertisements everywhere and were not forced to watch 3D movies.

[–] Blu765 13 years ago

...(I don't really think the nuclear plants are responsible for the alligators, but it was part of Herzog's point)...

I couldn't get past his inference that the Nuke plant was somehow responsible for the albino alligators. Of course they weren't responsible. They are just albino alligators.

I think there was something in that postscript about global climate change, also, but I was too busy trying to figure out the whole "doppelganger albino alligator" thing to notice the climate change point he was trying to make.

The film didn't need the postscript (or at least not that particular one). It was outstanding except for those last 5 minutes.

[–] oneseat 13 years ago

"The film didn't need the postscript (or at least not that particular one). It was outstanding except for those last 5 minutes."

Amen to that. I'm glad I'm not the only one completely mystified by the albino-crocodiles-as-doppelgangers commentary. And, yes, I was pissed off that the last beautiful images from the cave and the haunting music accompanying them were muddied with this extraneous nonsense.

[–] roulin 11 years ago

100% in agreement. Great movie, but the albino crocodiles thing? Ouch.

[–] napierslogs 13 years ago

I agree with Teddy_Salad. I couldn't try to understand what he was trying to say with them because I was so taken aback by the inference that the nuclear plants were responsible for the albino crocodiles.

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[–] bruce-129 13 years ago

I think Herzog is mistaking senility for profundity on that one. The albino alligators going into the caves seemed like a very weird thought to me ... can't imagine why or what he thought that.

[–] bmennen 13 years ago

Yep...except when you're Herzog, it's difficult for people in your entourage to say "Take that last 5 minutes out! You're making a fool of yourself!"

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] tadzio148 13 years ago

It's like the dancing chicken in Stroszek. Herzog has some weird preoccupations, and reptiles seem to be one of them. See, for example, The Bad Lieutenant for gratuitous lizards in the office and a dying alligator along the highway.

[–] Luddify 12 years ago

Exactly - it's just Werner being Werner. Thank God for that...

[–] information_police 13 years ago

As others have said, the nuclear plant isn't responsible for the albino alligators. I've seen them in several zoos/aquariums. Apparently they are born all the time but in the wild, they don't live long because they stand out in murky water and are quickly eaten by predators.

Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] optimusprime8062 13 years ago

Don't really know what he was saying but during the film I remember thinking "Wow, 30,000 years ago. These people are practically aliens." But maybe someone has a transcript of that scene so we can figure out what he was truly saying?

Also, I'm in opposite land here. That 5 minutes was the only part of the movie that I felt like something was actually happening or being said. This movie just kind of...passed by me, didn't really get into it. I find the cave art to be very interesting of course, but it seemed like I was watching stills of the art go by with narrations like "This is cave art from a long time ago. It was found in '94 in France." Just facts. And I guess the part where they talk about the people being an extension of a spirit when they painted them (at least in Australia) was a glimpse into something more.

Well, I broke out into a little mini-review there. Probably annoying to the people who loved the film, but I still appreciate Werner Herzog a great deal!

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] twilliams76 13 years ago

I think some read too far into Werner's words about the mutant albinos. He does NOT say the nuclear power plants or radiation are to blame ... he never states anything like that. He does make mention that a new ecological system is starting up in a region where 30K years ago ice covered the grounds. He makes mention of very warm waters and a "surreal" environment that WE have made but he doesn't mention a specific reason for the mutant albinos ... he doesn't even state there are record numbers of them in these waters. They are simply there.

He's simply making a point about time and the eco-system and man's contribution to it all. I don't think a man of this seeming-intelligence is going to make a leap of blame like this.

[–] TemporaryOne-1 12 years ago

To add to what others have said, since an alligator is prehistoric (55 million years old) and contemporaneous, an alligator represents 55 million years merged together, the prehistoric merged with the present. Like prehistoric cave art, albino alligators (and albino crocodiles...) are sensitive to light and temperature, they're both rare, hard to find, when found all measures must be taken to protect them, they're unique, richly symbolic, extremely primitive-looking yet highly advanced and sophisticated in their design, both upset traditional narratives (biblical creationism, myths that prehistoric man was inarticulate and lacked full cognitive competence, myths that prehistoric art lacked penetrating meaning and style and sophistication), etc. Albino alligators and albino crocodiles are the "cave art" of evolution and cave art is the "mutation" of prehistoric man. Albino alligators/crocodiles are much more aesthetic and appealing and less threatening than their 'doppelgangers' and the mystery of their different colour was decoded by science and albino reptiles are on display for the world to see, a mesmerizing example of evolutionary art, whereas the latter are mutations in the sense that they mutate from what the traditionally accepted narratives of cave men assert: traditional narratives assert that cave men were not capable of producing meaningful/mature/stylized/advanced/carefully premeditated art and thus cave art was merely a straightforward primitive childish catalogue of daily life and ritualism, and any cave art that disproves the traditional narrative is perceived to be in the minority and an anomaly and dangerous, dangerous because advanced cave art lends credibility to a history of mankind which is at odds with biblical narratives/biblical truths as well as the scientific community's implicit ideological agenda to assert and maintain an absolute gap between primitivism and civilization) and thus mutative. But not mutative for long: since the discovery of the Chauvet Cave, the traditional narratives have underwent dramatic transformation. Consensus is being built across multiple and converging disciplines that prehistoric culture was indeed a culture and a culture as rich as the cultures following it, a culture beyond our decoding power, beyond our decoding power because contemporary civilization is too mutated to understand it its ancestors.The postscript was a brilliant way to end the documentary.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] ewetopia 12 years ago

I do agree with your interpretation, and here's an excerpt from a Variety review that speaks to the point.

After the screening, Herzog admitted, “I love those crocodiles.” They are us, he added. That was his crazy thought, the one that made him worry about being dragged off to a padded room. But is it really so crazy? Modern man brought the crocodiles thousands of miles from their homes, and nuclear radiation turned them white. They have changed. They do not resemble their ancestors in the wild. Perhaps they will outlive them. Their ancestors are suited for a world that is passing; the albinos are primed to thrive in the world that is to come.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2010/09/are-we-really-as-weird-as-werner-herzogs-white-crocodiles

~There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.~

[–] ejbmarneyens 12 years ago

This is a highly compelling interpretation, especially your comment on survival. We today live in an environment as manufactured as the crocodiles'. The idea of "doppelgangers" though is still unclear to me. He seemed to be pointing out the mirror-image quality of the two albinos lined up next to each other, whereas with humans he claimed the doppelgangers were modern man and prehistoric man mirrored across the surface of the cave paintings: two kinds of men alike in their capacities to dream, etc, separated by a distance of time which is, for spiritual purposes, negligible. This doesn't quite jive with the idea of the crocs, whose ancestral analogue is prehistoric crocs growing up in a "natural" environment and not an artificially heated one. The likenesses and contrasts seem to be a little mixed in the metaphor, the way I see it. But maybe Herzog just really liked the pose those crocodiles happened to float into, in that moment.

PS: I disagree that people of 35,000 years ago were just as intelligent as we are today. They certainly had the hardware (in the brain) for modern intelligence, but intelligence, just like human culture, had to develop with time. It had to be invented and accumulated piece by piece through generations of teachers and students. Geniuses along the way from Archimedes to Newton to whomever have taught us more and more methods of interpreting and understanding the universe which are intuitive but not inborn. We often take it for granted that logic, deduction, etc. are human nature, but in fact they had to be invented by geniuses. In this way, human intelligence can't be thought of as self-contained within the individual but rather as a process, an institution, an extraordinary vapor which is supported only across many minds and generations.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] finnegansword 12 years ago

Now this is fun; was cave man as intelligent as we are today? I maintain that he was, but ejbmarneyens thinks otherwise. What we must consider is that cave man in his primitive society had little use for logic. It just had not been invented and we have to wait for Ancient Greece to formulate the rules perhaps 5000 BC. I think their enemies the Persians were very good at the logic and strategies of warfare, as they succeeded in conquering much of the Middle East and almost conquered Ancient Greece too!

What we have here are two different ideas; homo sapiens with a first-class head on his shoulders who had emerged out of Africa about 50 million years ago and steadily colonised the Euphrates basin and then penetrated both East and West. Thus, our cave men arrived in their idyllic valley and perhaps the climate changed for the worse? I suspect that they found themselves trapped, so they made the best of it beside the river with its limestone cliffs.

Empress Wu states that radiation was responsible for the albino crocodiles, but this phenomenon occurs in human society as a result of genetic mutation. They have been known for centuries, frequently suffering from poor eyesight and skin problems and of course pigmentation phenomena resulting in almost white hair. Radiation has nothing to do with it and the albino crocodiles were selected for the movie because they made wonderful theatre in contrast to their well-camouflaged parents.

But I feel certain you have your own ideas.

[–] ewetopia 12 years ago

Empress Wu states that radiation was responsible for the albino crocodiles

I just quoted a magazine interview with Herzog, who made that claim. Clearly, albino alligators exist in a state of nature. The ones in Herzog's documentary were shipped from Louisiana. They are most certainly not radioactive.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/werner_herzog_fesses_mutated_al bino_crocodiles_in_cave_of_forgotten_dreams

Herzog was going for something lyrical and crazy and he found it in his own "interpretation" of what he saw inside that nuclear plant.

~There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.~

[–] ewetopia 12 years ago

PS: I disagree that people of 35,000 years ago were just as intelligent as we are today. They certainly had the hardware (in the brain) for modern intelligence, but intelligence, just like human culture, had to develop with time

Very, very astute comments, but have we considered the possibility that in our human-made environment, we may have also lost certain kinds of intelligence? (e.g. spatial, animal-related, gustatory, etc.)

~There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.~