The Philosophy of Docurnentary Film: Irnage, Sound, Fiction, Truth, edited by David LaRocca (Lexington Books, 20t7),209-224. Chapter I The Ecstasy of Time Travel in Werner Herzog's Cfrve of Forgatten Dreams William Day ln Stanloy Cavell's oxtersive eeilvre on films and film theory, very littlr is said atrout the documentary. Cavell's wlitings address mosttry classical l'Iollywood cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, though there are also remarks r'*nging from single sentences to full-lledged readings of tilrns sketching lcross [he cinernatic canon liom the beginning to the end qrf the last century. llut the atrsence of explicit wridngs by Cavell on nonfictiorr film (with one or lwo exceptions) t$rn$ ()ut not to mattcr much [<rr tho present discussion on the tkrcumentary as corsidered through Cavell's writings. This is bocause, on his vicw, to weigh the meaning of "documentary film" is perhaps already to he wc:ighing one word too meny: "every movie has a documentary basis," as he srys in rernarking on the use of documentary footage in Du.{an Makavejev's lineet Movie (1974).r Cavell underscores this documentary basir by reminding us of "the camerans ineluctatrle interrogation of th* natural endowment rrl'the actors." But one can add more generally that film, whose m,tterial hasis Cavell identifies as "a suefie*$ion of automatic world prqiectians,"2carrics out its magic hy reproclucing the world automatically, rnd so invariahly tkuumcnts ($ome pert o0 the world and its inhrhitants. I spoak here only ol' films that arc made in this way, and will not be cr:nsidering alternative nlcan$ o[:creatifig mr:ving images-neither thase means that date from enrly in nrrrvic histoqy (such as animation) nor more recent alternative techniques (sucrh ls CGJ). 'l'hus I hegin with the thuught that one cnn characterize, if not define, docunr('nlirry {ilm us (hat gonre o[ {ilnmaking thut lays bare rhe fact of alt film. (':rvcll numes this tirct by saying that lilm prc$ent$ "a worlql I know, and see, lrrrt to wlriclr I um ne vcrthclcss not prtscnt," thal is, "a world past."] rffhile ('itvell's eluirrr is no[ momrt tu hc takcn a{ laco valuc, as wc will sce shortly, 210 Williarn Day the idea that the world we find in the movie theater is inevitably past already suggests why it is that the documentary, and fiIm generally, seems to revel in the fragility of the momentary, in the intimation of a secret contained in the unrehearsed, the spontaneous, the aleatory. Watching a film with interest often means joining in the camera's delight in the chance happening, the "blink and you miss it" passing event. It is as if we take the measure of our lives from such transitory moments; they reveal our fate. But wllat is it to "know, and see, , . . a world past"? What is our fascination with the cinematic world, whose "only difltrence from reality" is that it "does not exist (now)"?aWhy be interested in reality only insofar as it rs past? We might try to answer these questions by saying that our real interest in fllm lies in preserving a world past. That is no doubt part of the motivation behind certain archival uses of moving pictures-the ethnographic study, for example, or the home movie or iPhone video. If we say that {ilm "preserves" a world past, we tie our interest in film-*or, perhaps better: our interest in film's metaphysical basis-to our interest in artifacts like fossil records, mummies, death masks, relics, perhaps even DNA coding. Andrd Bazin famously draws on such analogies to specify the nature of liIrn's realism, which he describes as "the preservation of life hy a representation of lif'e."s If one were to take one's cue from this collection of analogies, then the interest of film, and a fortiori of the documentary, would be that it preserves aspects of the world for future contemplation or understanding, so as not to lose those aspects of the world to the ravages of time. But while film may carry artifactual interest, the interest of artifacts is not everywhere preservationist. Consider Rohert Gardner's documentary I'orest of Bliss (1986) and its presentation of a ritual cremation in India" When Cavell, writing about this film, proposes cremation as one of this film's many allegories of the camera's life, he sees in it not a ritual of preservation but, in his words, "a ritual ligured as transfiguration itself." The lesson Cavell draws from this implication ol Gardner's Forest of Bliss is thal "film is the mediurn of transfiguration . . . blossed or cursed with the fate, in the same gestures, to destroy and recreate everything it touches."6In "More of The World Viewed," Cavell is at pains to explain the nature of this transfigurative power of film; his struggle there is to avoid the misunderstanding that the significance of the filmed world is its m,ere pastness. The experience of watching a movie on a screen in an otherwise dark room is fbr Cavell not an experience of the world preserved so much as that of the world raised or transfigured (and not by being raised into the realm o1'fiction): My intuition js that fictionality docs not de$cribe tho narative or dramatic mode of fllm^ . . . I think the rnodc is morc closcly bouncl to tho nrylhologictl thun it is to tho lictional. . . . The Ecstasy af Time Travel 211 When I say that the audience in a movie house is preseRt at something that has happened, I do not wish to imply that the events on the screen have taken place, as it were, in real life, northat they are inevitably set in the past . . ,: How can one be present at something that has happened, that is over? . , . To speak ofbeing present at something that is over is not to state a falsehood hut, at best, to utter a paradox" . . . My repeated emphasis on such notions as the projected world's not existing . . . are meant to correct, or explain (o1'course, mythologically to con'ect or explain), what is wrong and what is right in the idea of thc pastne$s of the projected world. I relate that idea most immediately to my passiveness hefore the exhibition o1'the world, tei the fascination, the uncannincss, in this chance to view the manit'estation of the world as a whole.T My airn in this chapter is to tbllow this collection of thoughts evoking the "paradox" in the experience of lilm generally-the paradox, nanrely, thut it is an experience of being present at something that has happened, $omething that is over. But I will not be taking the path forged by Cavell's idea that "filnr is a moving image of skepticism."s l have no doubt of the importance o1' that claim fbr identifying a motivation behind our fascination with reality projected and screened. By saying that I will off'er a dillerent path, I do not meun that the sense of otherworldliness and uncanniness that skepticism trades in will be left very far behind. But I note that Cavell's words-his description of a paradox inherent in the experience of film-play on the sound o1'a paradox that, in the most straightfbrward sense, is a paradox not of skepticism but o1'time. It is true that when we speak ol'being present at sclmething thut is over-_when we speak of being in the grip of a movie-the paradox this exprosses is not captured by the traditional philosophical paradoxes ol'timc dating back to Zeno and unraveled by Aristotle, Augustine, and othcrs. Thc cinematic paradox arises not so much in our ways o1'talking about time us in our experience of it. Ancl it is as experience that the cinematic paradux leads me to ask whether we would be better off, as film theorists, iI'we drcw the comparison between film and artifacts the other way around. Instearl of understanding film's peculiar transfigurations by analogy to practicas ol' preserving the past-cremation, mummification, and so on-what might we learn if we tried to understand our interest in fr:ssils records or mummies or DNA coding by analogy to our intcrest in film, or to our fascination with being present to "a world past" given to us in film? In the next seotion I examinrl three pre-cinematic descriptions ol'relations tcl timc-in Emcrson, Thoreau, ancl Weil-that anticipate the paradr:x ol' timc inhcrent in lilm. What we learn l'rom that exarnination will be put to usc iu thc suhsequcnt und Iinal section, wher"e thc achicvcment of Werncr Herzog's Catte rt' Forgrtvn Dream,s, ostensihly a lilrn ahout prchistolic cavc paintings, will hc srcn l.o lie not in its dtrumentatiun ol'a Limc past hut in it$ liheriltion ol'thc prrJsont, lockcd-in-placc rrx)mcnt. 212 Willittm Dtty THE ECSTASY OF T1ME TRAVET The textual passages we will be considering in this sectioo are not explicitly about the peculial paradox of time that arises in our experience of film. But they nonctheless describe similar experiences of time, or attitudos one might take toward time, that parallel our experience of cinematic time. They thereby cast Iight on the cinematic experience of a world past, revealing it as the experieuce of a particular kind ol'wonder-what I will want to call philosophic wonder. The {irst textuai passage is taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "History," the opening essay in his 1840 coilection flssays.' First Series. As in virtually every essay written hry Emerson, in this one he attompts to alter or reroufe our unexamined relation to our own experience. Emerson's topic in "History" is the experience we have in considering and reflecting on the past, specifically on the historical and prehistorical past"*-the past as we come to it preserved in books, in artilacts, in bones, in rocks. We are prone to think that in such physical forms the past is preserved simply" without cinematic or other paradoxes of tinre, since we ancl tl'le recorcl wo examine are simply present to one another. I hold the book, I examine thrl geological outcrop, and my el1brt appears to be to understand, not sometlring ahout the present that I and the record occupy, hut son:ething about the past. My wish :is ta go there: the distance between prosent and past is the barrier to the pasq that distance must be overcome. Yet it is precisely this understanding ol"'the past" that Emerson calls "wild, $avage, and preposterous." To correct it, he draws our attention to the character of the time we experience when we are reflecting on the past (a time he designates "the Here and the Now"). He begins his recalibration o1'the meaning of the past hy considering the archaeologist at work in the lleld: [Giovannil Belzoni digs arrd measures in the mummy-pits and pyrarnids of Thebes. untii he can see the end ol the difl'erence between the monstrous work and hirnself. When he has satisfied himself'" in general and in detail, that it was made by such a persorl as he, so armed and so motived, and 1.o ends to r.vhich he himself should also have worked, the problem is solved; his thoLrght lives along the whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacomhs, passes through them all witlr satisl'action, and they live again to the mind. ar ate n,or,v.') Studying the past-contemplating the peoplc who livccl thcn-is not an experience of time travel as orclinarily inragined (c.g., nry lcuving "thc llcrc and the Now" to go back to "Thcrc ancl 'fhcn"), hul ruthcr an r.:xpcricncc ol' cloublencss, o1'l.wo rcgislcls ol'tirr-rc. Our irrraginiug ol'thr: pas( hirs signilicil"lc:c l'lot as a singullr"ity hut irs il conl[)ilt.irtivc: it involvcs r.lxltr:ric:ncirrg tlrl,r' Tlte Etstas1of Time 'tr'ravel ? I .1 moment lransfigured in the wake of that (the past). The people who populittrr the past, as marked lry their books or bones, are present trt us in oLtr wtty ol conceiving their ways o1'being in the wodd. We do not travel back ttt tltonl they travel ahead to us. Our experience of this rnoment olidenti fication iurtl insight-"they live again in the mind, or are nor,"**is what gives "prcsorvirrg the past" whatever sense it has if it is not to mean a shelving of the past, it wity ol putting the past in its place as "what was." In "The American Scl'lolar," Emerson provides us with a rclattod nucount of tho translormation that happens as we consider and reflect on orlr own, pcrsonal past. I{ere is Emerson's description of the process whcrcby our ltits( actions become our present thought: The actions and events ol our childhood ancl youth, are now fitattats ol citlrtt. est observation. They lie like lair pictures in the air. Nol so with out fcc:t:ttl actions,-with the business which we now have in hancl. On lhis wc trcr tlttih.' unat"rle to specr-rlate. Our af'lbctions as yet circulatc through it. . . . 'l'ltc ttt w deed is yet a part ol life,-rernains lbr a time immersed in our urrcunscious lilir. In sonre contemplative hour it detaches itself from thc lil'c like r rip* li'uil, lo become a thought of the mind. Instantly it is raisecl, transfigulccl; (ho cot'rultlihlr' has put on incomrption. Hencetbrth it is an obiect ol'beauty, htlwcvrrt base ils clrigin and neighborhood.ri) Where the Empiricists describe the work of memory as a Inorc copying ol' original and more vivid sensory experiences, Enierson rcversos thoit' e lirirtt. 'Io hring the past into the present by remembering it is not a clinrinislttttr:nl o['the original experience, a second-best. Rather, Ii:r Emerson, cotttolttplitt. irrg the past is a way of taking it in, or on, that the original exporicncc irr ils livcliness could not (logically or grammatically) provide. Somothirrg likt' this transligurative power ol ruminative thought is known by many nan)c:s rucross the mottled history of philosophy: as Plato's doctrine of rccollcc:l.iort ot urwnrrcsis; for Hegel, as thc achievement of We ltgeist in coming to know itsclf'; kx'Freud, as tlre hasis atrd presumption of the psychoanalytic nrctltod. llu( we should nol allow the interiection o{'inlluential na.mcs and thcorics lo rlistracl us lrom Emer$on's singr"rlar image, thal what we aro now doing will ";rrrt on incorruption" in hcr-:ornirlg thought. His idea is not that tltoughl,,; trc irrcorruptihlc, the naturc ol'a thought is that it passcs ("a passing thotrglrt"), llis iclca is that c<xrtemplatirrg tlrc past-.say, thirrkirrg hack t<t llro nrotttr,ttl wc (irst rcad llmcrson's very worcls, "thc lrrrsirrcss" wc thon had lilt:l'rrlly "irr lrancl"*-is an cxpcricncc that is ncither in thc tirnc ol'Lhc plsl c[rctl rror' Ioclicrl in thc plcscnt lTlonront ol'tlrc rccollc:ction, hut sits btrstt'irlc tltc lwo. Ort (lris irccor"rrrt, to lollcct on iin(l's own l)ust is Lo bc lillcrl orrt ol'littirr irlto;lrrlltcr, into thc rc-,ulru ol'(lrc: irrcrlrrupliblc. 214 William Day Wirat a monlent ago I charactcrized as an expericnco of doutrleness-the human ability tr: intirse the present mfinent with the vitality of another mofllent so that they mary in an instant, somewhere beyond our ordinary, one-dimensional sense of time-is not lar lrom the mood r:1' a paragraph in Henry David Thoreau's Wo,Lden, in the middle oi his chapter titled "Solitude." It reads: With thinking we may be beside ourselve s in a sane sense. Ry a conscious elTolt r,r['the mind we can stand aloof liorn actions and their coil$equences. . . . I only know niyself as a huma,n entity; the sccile, so to speak, of thoughts and afl'ections; aud arn sens:ible of a cefiain doubleness by wlrich I can stanil a$ remote lir:rn uiysell as i'rom aunther" However intense my erperience, I am conscior"rs of the presence ancl criticisnr of a part nl me, which, as it were, is r.rot a pafi of me, birt spectator, sharing no experience, bLrt taking noLe of it, and ihat is no rnore I than it is you.rl lf we take our cue I'rom Cavell and read this remark as answering tti a threat of shepticism-specifically, io the skeptic's cloubting the possibility o{'human action per se--then what this double or spectator shows us is, according to Cavell, "a mode of what [Thoreaul calls 'bcing interested in."'r2Beyond your selfl, caught in the midst of' your experience, Thoreau reminds you of the possibility of n spectator-self "beside" you, "taking noto o{'' the experience lihe a spectator at a play. What yoLl achieve by this conscions act of doutrling yoursclf is a kind oi'unseifconscious sell'-awareness-your right, in Cavell's phrase, "to take an interest irr your own experience."rl Cavell asserts thaL Walderu sometimes calls this spectatorial clouble "the imagination," thereby casting this spectntor in the role of specter.raBut that rnay be a too hasty reading nn Cavell's part, given the arnbiguity in Thi:reau's lurther descriplion of this mindlirl achievement.In Wolden, Thoreau conLinues: "When fhe piay, it may bc the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind ol fiction, a work of the irnagination only, so far as he was concerned."ls Thoreau seenls to he saying that it is rry ltfe that is imagined fiom the point o1' view of this dispassionate spectator-self. Then who is doing the imagining, and who is being imagined? Perhaps the sense is: when thrclugh a conscinus elfofi you consider yoursell'fiom a remote standpoint, what you are considering is a shitdow play of yourseli': sr:mething that, like a shadow, is objective and perceivable but also insubstantial and ephemcral. That is one reading. But I understand Thoreau to he saying sorlrcthing else, and something not distant fiom Emcrson's earlicr thought. Wherr t:nc is simply ln time, taking expcrience as it comcs, aninral-likc, ono is as yet unroalizecl, and so "a kincl ol'fiction." In thc compctition liit'uty attonl.ion**(lrat is, hetwecn nry ahsurpLion or subsurrtption iu thc scorrcs ol'rrry lilc iurcl tny lincling intr.rost irr thosc sc(:ncli ls sl.rtrcllttol llrc rrtorr t'ror:('ssilry, tlrc rrtorr": The Ecstasy of Time 7'rtn,el ,? 15 helplul and neighborly, standpoint is the ref'lective one, in whiclt I stittrrl next to time but not in it. Such a descripticin tits Lhe predominant ltroorl ol Thoreau's "Solitude," in which society is flot to be I'ound in "tlre rlcpol. llrr' post-office, the barroom, the rneeting-house"--in the "outlying anel tt'ittrsit'ttl circurnstances" of a lif'e as it is lived.16To see these as "essential lo il ri(rrr'n(: and healthy lif'e" is to sufTer what Thoreau calls "a slight insanily.'"r/'l'ltt' rellective or doublilrg stanelpoint, contrariwise, where one is hcsiclc ortr:sr'll' sanely, will find its society in what Thoreau calls "the percnnial sor.rrcc ol our' li{'e"; and the prospect of awakening to lif"e, he says, "makcs intlil'lcrcrrt rrll times and p1aees""18It lbllows that to consider one's existencc lhrrt llrr,: slrrtrrlpoint that Thoreau charactcrizecl as being flext to onrl sclf, "whcrc: tltc grirttrlcsl laws are continually being executed," is to neighhor titne as wcll.r"'l'ltorr'iru is, one could say, giving the phenomenological evidencc iot it notrtrctlrl lrt'r' spective oR our intuition o1'time, and on our Iives, suggestittg tltitt oLrr litrtr' hound perspective is unexamined. perhaps imaginecl, and cr:rtitirtly lritrt iirl. A third and final desc,ription of the doubling o1'timc is skolchr"rrl irt Sirrrorrt' Weii's Gravity antl. Grace, particularly in thc hriol'antl rr:nttu'kithh.: clritplt'r' "Rcnunciation o1'Time." Despire the titls o{'thr: chapl"cr (whiclt is rtot ltt't's). Weil asks not that one renounca all, of time hut s<.lnrethittg.itrs( slroll ol ltll. One is urged to renounce past ancl future: tcl ahandon, lttorc sllt:i'i lir'irlly, llrc scll-deception of imaginir-lg lime as a place and a possibility clil'lr:rtrrl Irrrrrr what the present can promise. The past and tutr"rrc o1'thc inrirg,inlrliorr iui' shades or blinds to one's sensing reality: "The imaginati<ln, (illcr ttp ol lltc void," shr; writes, "is essentialiy a liar."?('For Weil, thcrc is u r"c;rcly i'tttt' lirt thr: habitual imagining ol a better time past or to conte, and l.lur( is to srrlli't wilh an intensity that can wipe out all thoughts ol'past or l'uturc (:onll)('n satiorr. Such intense suffbring also, against all expectalittn, itllows ()llc lo stracldlc the door that opens onto eternity: 'fhc past and the luture hindcr the wholcsome cl'l'cct of ol'lliction hy prrrvirlirrp an unlirnitecl tielcl lbr irrraginary clevation. Tlrat is why tlro rcrrutrciutiott ol' ;lirsl lnd l'Lrtur-c is the lirsl ol'all rctlunciations. 'l-he prescnt does not altain linalily. Nor clocrs thc lr.rture, lill it is orrly wlral will be prossnt. Wo clo nol hnow this, lutwgvcr. il'wo apply to tltc Jrrcsr:tt( lltc point o['that closirc wilhin us whiclr corrcsponcls to lirurlity" it pir"rrctrs riltlrl lhlorrgh to lhc otcrnal. Whcn pain and wcarincrss rcaclr thc point ol'causing o $cns('ol'pt:r';tclrtity lo hr, holrr irr t.ho soul, thror,rgh crtutcntyrlating tlris pr-rrpr-rtuity witlt itcccptlrttcc ltttrl Iovc, wc arc sna(ctrl:d awiry into rllcilrity.rl Wi:il dcscribcs irn cxlroriorrc(, ril lirrrcr. -clcirtly n()t irn tv.llorisrtcr: srlrtplrl hy rrll irr corrtlust to wlrich, lrgirin, Llrr: thrlrrght ol'trirvt:lirtp, rttrt rtl llrc ptt'strrtt rrrourct)t's llirirr irnrl irrlo solntr lirttn'tr clcrtrity, ir ('()nllx'nslrlirtf ittttrtortirlity, is 216 Willicm Day revealed as clelusional. The sense of the eternai is not to be experienced in the future, or ever, if it is nr:t discoverable through the dawning of an aspect o1 the present. The aim of Weil's devotional life is not ttl suff"er tbr the sake of su{fering. Rather, intense suffering allElws the present moment lo reveal to one's experience what the reality o{'the oternal waits upon: achieving the perspective of eternity requires simply that I renounce the thoughl that there is snme (other) time when I will gain it. Weil's "renunciation of time" can seem at oilds with the attitude towarciil time that makes renunciation so much as possible-*l mean the aspiration to abandon one's past and to change, the commitment to one's better or higher self, what Emersur at one place names ono's "unat[ained hut attainable sel{'""22Being inspired by a vision of a dift'erent tuture sell is at least half of the motivation in Cavell's narrative of rnoral perl'ectionism.23That vision of another self for one's self serves [o balance the other, initiating half of that mood-the otherwise nverwhelming $ense of disapprlintment or disgust in one's present se11.In Cities ofWords, Cavell highlights the aspiral'ional hall of the nroverrent to a next self when he sa.ys, "what [moral] perf'ectionism propo$es [isl that no state of the self achieves its f'ull expression, that the late of finitude is to want, that human desire projects an idea of an unending beyond."2aBut that is, again, but half of the realization that can set tl'le soul in motion. Elsewhere Cavell joins Weil try bringing inta view the clarity of thoughtthatthepresentinstantpresents: "Each, stateof theself is,sotospeak, Iinal: each state constitutes a world (a circle, Emerson says) and it is one oach one also desires. . . . On such a picture ol the sell'one could say hoth that signilicance is always del'emed and equal.ly that it is never del'erred (there is no later circie until it is drawn)."2s Taken together, these two passages lrom Cavell suggest that an ideal, or at least a helpl'ul, conception o1' the Hereand-Now is that orre is receptive both to one's attained sell (its expression o{'one's self) and lo one's unattained selI'(or how one's present self always ialls short of expressing itsell'i. The moral is that i1'yiiu claim the right "to take an interest in your own experience," then when you are ahsorhed in your present experience (whether it afflicts you, as in Weil, or disgusts you, as in Nietzsche,26 ol enraptures you, as can happen in the cinema), you are ttl give up the iclea that the redemption o1 your prosent (seli) lies elsewhere, at some other time. It each of the flrregoing texts hy Emerson, Thoreau, attd Wcil, we are given cause to distrust our ordinary unclerstanding o{'the pnst. Ernerson, {or example, undermines our sense that the past harbclrs knowledgc r.rl'itscll that is both ideral and metaphysically inaccessihlo to us. Wc arc givcn caltse as well to clistrust oul: sensc ol'tho prcsent as l'ixcd dctcrminisLically betwcon past and ['utrtrc; ThrtrcaLr, lilr ins(lutco, urtclcrntitrcs our licllsc that wc itrc crcatLlros incvitably or r,:hronicirlly situatc:cl itt thc ttnstollptthlc, silcrtt sli;-rpagc The Ecstasy rtf'l'inc'l'rttvtl 717 of time. And wrl are given cause to distrust olu' lcvcronce 1'or: the past and tltt: luture; Weil, for example, undermines ollr scnsc ol'lta"r over the prcl'icllll, ils if it waits to ensnare us, so that we think the hettcr alternative woulrl hc trt escape it by means of the irnagination. Taken together, these texts rotttittr.l tts of our cognitive possibility to consider ourselves, or transport oursclvos, ttltlside of tirne. They thereby illuminate how the popular lantasy of'tinte travtrl (our wish to "travel through" tirne) not only misses in what way tritvclittg through time is our ordinary mode of lil'e (what we otherwise cirll -'livirrg") but amounts to a wish to kill time, or to abort the present. lt is onc ol'crrttttttk:tis lantasies that humans devise to avoid the pregnancy of (imc itscl[:-'l'antlsics that allow us to ovedook the possibilities, beytlnd sciencs fictittn, ol'occttpying two times at once. Each of these writers (and the traditir:n (hcy cxcrtr;rlily, stretching ba,ck to Plato) reconceives the human desirc to sl.cJl ttut ol'litntr. 'They accomplish this hy revealing and nurturing through languitgc itlt itttr,:trrsl in experiencing lacets of the present momeilt that clil'lbr lhrrtt l.hc ordittitt'y, immersed, unr"eflective sense o1' time. HARZOG'S CAVE OIT TORGOTTTN DITEAMS Il', as I claim above, theso descriptions ol'cxperiencing l'irccts ol'tltc ltrr:sr.rttl moment are literary preoufsot's or equivalents to thc cxpcrioncc ol'"'a wot'ltl past" in film, then a part of our fascination wi[h that world itlvolvcs its ltowct' to place us outside our clrdinary, imrnersecl, nnrclloctivc rclation to (itttr. (l think of tliis claim, arising tiom the "paradox" in thc cxporicncc ul'liltrt. rl()t as competing with but as standing alongside Cavell's discovery thtrt lilrtr is "a moving image of skepticism," by which he means that lilnr satislios ottt' irrtcrest to view the world in private and unseen, mechanically displacod liotrt il.??) I do not mean to say that the experiencc of lilm a.utomatk:olLv clisplai:cs Lrs l'rom our ordinary relation tr: time. It is a metaphysical ['act tltat, wlrcn wc watch a. movie, wc are present at sonrething that has happenecl; hut u givon lilrnmal<er may chu:se tr: bring out (draw on or exploit) this l'act, or ttot. ln tlre light oi thc prcvious section's cliscovcrics ahout literary antcccdcnts to thc way cincma clisplaccs titne, wc tnight concltlclc that itn cscitpis( nrovic-il'therc is such a kintl ol'movic-is rrril cxpklitittg tlris nrctapltysir.:;tl l'irct at thc heart ol" [ilm. Whal tlre tcxts cxarninccl abovc: prornisc is ttot, ils witlr escapist rnovics, a way to cs('(Lp( lhe prescn,t-trt livc itt tltc itnaginittitlt irr iurothcr tirrrc, whcthcr pust or'[irtr"rc"--"hut u wi]y l"o cscirl)L: titttc, or stty it ccltirin Intalist vicw ol'thc prcscnt, hy inviting us to givo ttt"ttsrrlvcs ()vor Io ollrc:l'possihilitics ilrhcrcnt in ths proricnt. Wcr c:un thirtk ol'tltc:ser otllor ltossrbilitics colloctivcly as urytltokrgic,irl roltttiotts to (itttr.:; itlttl wc will lintl, ilt r'rlrsir.lc;ing WcrrrLrr l'lcrzog's 20 l0 tklc:utttctttitly li:itttttr' ('ttlt'ol littr'14ttllt'rt 218 Willtum Day Dreants, that creating the conditions fbr placing or displacing the viewcr in a mythr:logical relation to time is a natural pos$ibility tor the medium of 1ilm" It is Lrecause the medium ol'film presents this possibilit_v thirt the documentary nature of film can bo understood not as a means of preservation but as a mcdium ol trunsfiguration. Cave ofForgoften Dreums, perhaps best known lor its use of 3D technology to lilm prehistoric cave pairrtings lbund in 1994 in Chauver Cave, in the Golges dc I'Arrl0che region ol'sonthern France, seems to pose the question: What are we to do with a vision of our collective ancestors that is somehow both induhitahle and unfathomable, evidence o{'the kind oI lact that makes time itself spin'/ The cave paintings, as revealed by radiocarbon dating, were created as far back as 32,000 years ago. Painted on unciulating cave walls, they register with us immediately for their striking verisimilitude, their depictit"rns of mostly large (and fbr us, oflen extinct) animal species. Bur these paintings insist as well that we take up not only their beauty of depiction but the humanly or creaturely life that surrounded them and brought thewr. to tile. How rnight we do that? One answer*-ler us label it the scientific answer-is represented in the film hy thc charrning circus-perfbrmer-turnedarchaeologist, Julien Monney, who, prompted oIl'camera hy Herzr:g, says: "Delinitely, we will ncver know [their thoughts and dreams], hecause Ithe] past is definitely liist. We will never reconstruct the past. We can only create a ropresentation of what exists now, today."28Herzog's Iilnr seems attracted at tirst to this humble assessment of the archaeologist's project of building a hridge to the pasf; shurtly after Monney's remarks, Herzog as narrator asks, "Will we ever be able to understand the vision of the artists aL:ross such an abyss of tims'/"2eBLrt roughly an honr into thc lilm, about the time we meet the mildly eccentric prolbssional perlumer, Maurice Marin, the narrative changes. We see Marin, in the cave, conclucle a lengthy speoch by saying (and it may be, as in any Herzog documentary. that the author o1'these wrtrds is not the speaker but Herzog): "The presence ol thcir livcs, meaning hurnt wood, resins, the odors of everything fiom the natural worlcl that surruuntis [his cave-r.ve can go back with our irnagination." Herzclg in voice-over then erdorses and supplements the thought these words express: "With his sense of wonder, the cave transf'orms into an enchanted world of the imaginary where tirne and space lose their meaning."3() "Ihis thought becomcs the film's touchstone in its response to the fact t'rf the Chauvet Cave paintings. The scientific perspective is embraced throughout the lilni not clespite but because o{'its conclusions, which are inconclusive:]1; the perspcctivc f'rorn wonelcr--it matters little whethe r we label it philosophic or cincma(ic wondcr--"is irt oncc rhc film's perspective ancl its gclal. We see the insidc ol'ClhuLrvcl. Cavr: intorrnitlcntly ilLrrirrg lhc first Lwcntythrcc rninLtl.cs ol'l{crzog's lilnr. ()n$ tuLrnt()t'irh[: slrr:lc:lr ol lixrtlgr:, lirslirrg Tke Ecstasy af Titne T"raveL 2l,9 almost fbur minutes, is inaugurated when Jean Ck:tt.es, the f'ormer dircctol ol research at Chauvet Cave, asks fbr silence fiom the scientists and crcw so that they might listen to the cave interior. While they (and we) are takirrp in the silence lhat is brr:rken only by the sound of water dripping, lhc sorrrrtl track gives way to a human hearlbeat.3'As is not uncornmon ior thc holllh\r human heart, it heats in sync with each passing second one by one, orrr: lirl one; it rneasures the steady passage of tirne that we share with tlro livirrg lruman ligures on the screen heltrre us, despite our metaphysical clistiurcc ['rom them. We see their attentive looking and listening as wo listcn iutrl lool' ourselves. The heartlreat also stands in lbr exactly how much, or how littlt:. wc have in common wilh those who slood and Iistened in th;r[ sanlcr ('it\/(. sornc 32.000 years earlier. Thc human l'aces we see are posing ir rltrcstiorr to the walls of the cave: the lilm is olfuring us the experiencc ol'it tn-yst(rt'.y. llut the heartbeat can feel loisted on us. Perhaps it is simply too cirlly irr tlrr. film tbr the sense ol the uncanny, f'or the enchanted rvorlcl ol'thc irrrrrpirrirly. to take hold. I1'tht: heartheat--as an emblem of both the passing scconcls irnll {.hc: rlislrrrrl rlillenttia-comes too soon, then what about its reappeariurccr n(rir tlrc r'rrrl ol' Cave of Forgottert Drecmts? In the inlervening timc, wc hirvc srrr.rr rurtl hcard multiple interviews, learned about the bionrass in Palcolitlric Iiunrl:c, lrccn shown ligurine specimens and ancient flutes, witncssccl a clontorrstltr(iorr ol'Paleolithic hunting techniques, and bcen guidecl through nnrlti;rlc toLrls ol'tlre cave. Bu[ now there fbllows a singular strel.uh <ll'l.imc---lirstiltg ovu' scvcn minutes-when Herzog halts his narration and paraclc ol'cxpcrls. irrrrl wc hear only the lilm's ethereal musical score ancl, at onc point wlrclt llrc rrtrrsic lades clut, the return o1'the human heartheat, What wc scc oll sct'(:('lt is a sequence of hirndhelcl shots, either still or slowly panning shots, ol'tlrc irtturior of Chauvet Cave. These shots return us to the sarnc stutic. uncl nrrw l'ruliliar, prchistoric cave imagcs that wcre introcluced at carlicl intc,r'virls irr tlrr'l [ilrri. Almost invariably, each shot olrens with an in situ ladc-in, hcgirrrrinl' in elarktrcss as the handhclcl I-ED light-panels are tLlrncd skrwly towrrrtl tlrt' t'rtvc wirll being [ilnrecl, as il'each paintcd surl itcc is grantcd its orvrr rlitr,vuirrp, ol irllowcd t() posc il.s own riddlo. Thc nrovcmcnt ol'thc light pancrls llrrvirlcs (lro only animation, othcr than thc carncra's occasiolral panning iutrl (trs it rirronrs) its paticnt absorlltion.rtr (iivcrr thc qLrickening pucc ancl incrcased optical chungc in lxrptrlirr lilrrrs ol rcccttt clccaclos,r'l l{crzog's lilm is burclcne:cl aI oncc with roc:ogrrizirrg irrrtl It'rrtlittg ol'l'thc Ilrrcnt thlt aucliorrccs will laugh, ()l'yilwn, rrt (lrr: lrrxuriorrs litno tlcvolotl lo tltcsc tll-hrrt-still sltots ol'r:avc:1'lirintirrgs. Iltrt lturglrtcl irrrrl ils rrripinirting itttxicty iro l'lrtnililt'r'csl)olrscs to tlrc rrrrrrirrirliolrs ol'plrilosoplry its tvr"rll. Ilow is i1 so rurrclt irs llossiblc: lllrl srrclr itrlrp,cs lrolrl orrr irrlr"n"sl'/ ,'\nrl why, s;rc11lq,i11g lirl rrtyscll tr( lctrsi, rlo Ilrtrsc rrrostl.y slirlit'irrr;r1,1'5 slrlisly 220 WiLliam Doy a longing that Cave af fr'orgotten l)yeams itself creates in us-an el'fect not unrelated to the thumping, throbbing climax of an action movie? My sense is that Herzog constmcts this concluding segment <tt Cave oJ'Forgotteru Dreams to be expericnced (if not as what he would call an "ecstatic truth," then) as an intervai o1'ecsltatic contemplation.35 There is something ahout the contemplation o{'the expansiveness of time and of our place in it, occasioned by roughly every other shot in Herzog's film, that can strike the viewer as revealing the incongruousness and absurdity of human existence itself. A moment's consideration of the hard tacts-fbr instance, that my father's lile, just short of ninety-seven ye ars, would be scarcely visible at the end of a three-meter timeline representing the years from Chauvet Cave to his death, an interval of time itsell dwarfed by the billions of years lhat rnodern cosmology places r:n either side of that interval -and we see why a filmgoer's nervous recponse to this mismatch of scale might be to laugh the absurdiry away. And yet Herzog's film, over the course of its preceding seventy-five minutes, has provided all the materials we need to experience a response other than nervous laughter. Like Freemasons prepared fbr initiation, we arrive at the end of the filn, wellequipped to meditate on mysteries. If the specific narrative aim of Cave of Irorgatten Dreams is to place us outside our ordinary, immersed, unrellective relation to time-to set up the conditions f'or imagining ourselves straddling time so as to contemplate other possibilities of our relation to it or placement in it-it is also the concern ol' the film to acknowledge this aspiration for the medium of film generally" One way to begin measuring the truth of this claim is to observe Herzog's fascination with the cinematic possibilities of the cave paintings and the torrn of lif'e that once surounded ther:r. He asks us to "note" that one of the cave artists painted a bisnn with eight legs, "suggesting movement-almost a f'orm of proto-cinema"; and a rhino nearby "seems also to have the illusion o1'movement, like fiames in an animated fi1m,":]6Herzog appears most delighted with speculation about what the evidence of a row of lires in Chauvet Cave tells us about the aboriginal experience of'the cave and its paintings. As he explains in an interview: And when you loclk at the cave, and there are certain panels, there's evidence of sorne fires on the grourrd. They were not lbr cooking, They were-because there's no evidence of any habitation in there*-they were used tbr illumination. You have to step in front of these fires to look at the irnages. And, of course, when you move yoLI must see your own shadow.r? When these speculations are introcttced in [{orzog's film they irnmediatoly give way to the most cxtraordinary tnd ek:lightl'r"rlly irrcongruous sequcncc irr thc docurncntary: wc aro shown the irnagc ol'lircrd Astirirc r.lancing wit.h thrcc The F)cstasy of Time T'ravel 2Zl of his shadows, a scene fiom the 1936 rnusical cometly swing "fime,'r"his dance sequence, Astaire's tribute to the African-American clancer known as Boiangles (Bill Rotrinson) and perl'ormed hy Astaire in muted black lircc, is often remembered by film critics (e.g., in Roger Ebert's 1998 review articlc)tH fbr the way it ends.The three slradr:w dancers eventually become exhaustcd and break out oi sync with Astaire, unable to keep up with him, ancl Astlirr.r dances a kind of victory lap by himsel{' before he walks orf coolly and (riumphantly; we are nol shown that conclusion in Herzog's exccrpl" ol'thr: sequenco. The conclusion o1 this dance seqltence in Swing Time, howcvcr, is srr memorable that critics typically misremember who breaks clr"tt ol'syne wilh whom frsr, thinking that the shadows are the {irst to stop, to oxhurs( (lrrr impulse to dance. But Herzog's film gives us exactly l.hat port.iorr ol'llrrr soquence where things first break down, which he descrihes witlr lrotlr prucision and admiration in the interview quoted earlier: "It is actually, ilrgrrlhly or for me, certainly the greatest single sequence in all ol'film history: l,rcrtl Astaire dancing with his own shadows, and all of a sudclen lrc stops rurrl thrr shadows hecome independent and dance withor-rt him anci ho has to r:irrclr Lrp with them.r mean it's just so quintessential movic. lt can't ho, it clrn't got firore lreautilul.":re Describing this Fred Astaire sequencc ts "ccr.(uinly thc greatest singie sequence in all of fllm history" is, arguahly or lirr rntr, something more than mere Herzogian hypcrbole. cavell" in "Frcd Astuircr Asserts the Right to Praise," reminds us that "the origin ol clancing" is ..irr ocstasy."a{rAnd in "something out ol'the ordinary" hc charactcrizcs lilrrr as "the art which replaces living human beings hy photographic shadows ol' thcmse lves."at A shadow is not typicaliy a shadow ol'sornethingpa,r/--"unlikr.r a mummy, a death mask, or a shrerud, metaphors with which, as noted at tlrc ontsct, Andrd Bazin describecl 11lm's lineage in realism. The clancing shaclows sequence fiom sw,ing Tirue as recounted and as borrowed by Hcrzrlg carns his high praise in part by serving as an emhlcm o1'what hoconrcs ol' things on lilm. Toput it ruinimally, things on I'ilnr have an cxistencc nol..iust indcpendent of but extending in time bettond the timc o['thc thirrgs [ilnrs{. Frcd Astaire stops, but his shadows dance on, and raptuxrrrsly: trrcy ltnow that thc dance now lrelongs to them. And it rnattcrs that whcn Astnirc stops, hc is turnccl toward us (i.c., tclwetrcl our scroen nnd away ll.onr his), und so is ur)ilwarc that thc shadows continuc on without him.''r2Thc soquonoc is thus rro lcss an cmhlcm o1'what bccorncs o['things filrrrecl: l"'rccl Astlilc is ilcird, Iong livc his slradows. So would it hc sirnplcr, as yor,r might t.hinl<, [rl roacl l-lcrzog's ine:lrrsion ol' tlto sorluoncc li"oln.lu,ln,('l'ima, utd tho signi(iclnco ol'(ltne tl'liot.ll(,tt(n L)x'ums gcncrnlly, as a stlitightlilt'wrrel nrcditat.ion on hunrirn ol elcru(urr:ly tttortitlily itntl (hc (or I'lcrzttg's) wislt to rk:lt"rirl it'/ Why ckr I rkrsr:rilrrr IL:r.z69's 2?2 Willictm Day {ihn as ot-fbring viewers tlre possibility of escaping a fatalist view not o{'the .futwre but of lhe present'? I conclude with two sorts of answer: (1) Everyone, as I imagine, and as I imagine Herzog imagines, can f'eel the incongruity in the film's juxtaposition o1'a discussion of Paleoiithic humans casting their shadclws on the images of Chauvet Cave with tlre image o1'shadows dancing in sync with Fred Astaire. One rnight suppose, however, that the incongruity lies in the incongruity ol the times juxtaposed*time periods that, as it were, lic in gppr:site regions of one 's consciousness. It helps in that case to be reminded that the two times or epochs that are juxtaposed in Herzog's sequence are not 32,000 years ago and the year 1936. This is because (a) there is not scrrne event of 32,000 years ago that the comparison to the sequence from Swing T'ime is asking us to acknowledge, and because (b) Fred Astaire's dancing with his shadows is not an evenl of the year 1936. Rather, each is a film event-that is, an episode whose relation to tts is captured by nothing more nor iess than its tense, an event indeterminately or mythically in tihe past. Cave af Forgotten Drea.ms, notwithstanding The l{istory Channel's role in iLs production, is not an attem pt ta docwment a time or a pe ople of the delerminate past" The {ilm offbrs, rather, one set of conditions for the possibility of an experience, what I have been calling (following Emerson and Thoteau) an experience of douhieness and (fbllowing Cavell) a rnythological relatian to time. (2) A Iinal explanation fbr why one should read Cave af Forgotten Dreams as inviting, ilot an escape fiom the present, but an escape from our ordinary or latalist view ol it, can be gleaned frt:m Hcrzog's title. We are not trlld over the course o1'the {ilm who is dreaming in the cave or, cotsequently, whose dreams have been forgotten. But we can ask the director ol Fitzcurraldo' .{t the end of Herzog's turn-of-Lhe-millennium commentary to the DVI) rerelease of Fitzcarruklo (.t982), a [ilm possihly best remembered tbr the demands of the fiim shoot (which included the pulling of an actual ship over a mountain-neither a model ship nor one created by animation or CGI), Herzog is asked whether he regrets the time and pain that the film exacted. While his answer is unsurprising-it is, in a word, No-Herzog recounts his telling others at the time, "[f I abandon this I would he a man without drearns. And I iust do not want to live as someone who has dropped aud disconnected from his own dreams."43 As the human heartbeat fades fi'om the sound track in Cave o!'Forgotten Dreams, we hear the narrator intone, "These images are memories of iong-forgotten dreams. is this their heartbeat, or ours'?"aa We are invited to consider that the dreams thal have been ftrrgotten are not those that were dreamt in the Paleolithic past; and wc are wclcome to ctlncludc that the dark but illuminated cave that contains fbrgottcn dreams is uot somewherc in southeru Francc hut surrounc{s us likc a movio thcittcr-is" irr lact, a nr<lvic theatcr-that awaits, in Wcil's lrtvcly plrrasc, oLrr upplying to tlrc prcscttt thc point ol'(lrat clcsirc within tts v,ihir-:h cttrl'cspontls trl lirtllity. Thc Ecsktsl, oJ' Time'lruvel NOTES 1. StarileyCavell,"OnMakaveievonBergmanl'inThemesOwtaJ'St:hool: lilJtrt,t and Ccutses (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), I l6; emphasis aclclcd. 2. Staniey Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflectians on the Ontol.og): ol'li'ilnL urtl, rrrl, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1979), 72. 3. Cavell, The l{orld Viewed,23. 4. rbid." 24. 5. Andrd Bazin, "The Ontology ol the Photographic Imagc," liil,nt. Sr,turterly 11, no. 4 (Surnmer 1960), 5. 6. Stanley Cavell" "Words of Welcome," Cayel.l on FiLm, ecl. Williarrr llotlrrnirrr (Albany: State University r:f New York Press, 2005), 219. 7. Cavell, The Wrld. Vievted,210*12. 8. Ibid., r88. 9. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hi$tory," ir"r fls,rnys and l,ecture,t (Ncw Yolli: l,ihrlry ol',America, 1,983), 241.. 10. Emerson, "The American Scholar," in Essa-ys un.d Lat:lurtrl,60 "6 l. 1 l. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, collected in T'he Rtrtnble '['lutn,trr, rovisgtl rrrli tion, t:d. Carl Bode (New York Penguin, 1977),385-86. 12. Stanley Cavell, The Senses of Waklen: An E.r:puniled lhlitiorr (liutt lirrrtrcitt'o: North Poinf Press, 1981), 102. 13. StanleyCavell, PursuitsoJ'Ilappiness:TheHollyutrxtd(tntetl.ttol llt'rrttrt'r'itrgt' 1()arnhridge: Harvard University Press, l98l ), 12. 14. Cavell, The Senses of Walden, 103. l-5. T'lr<rreau, Wal,tlen, in The Portabl,e T"horca.u, 386. 16. lbid., 384*85. r7, rbid.,382*83. llt. Ibid.,384-85. 19. lbid., 385. 20. Simone Weil, Gravlry and (lrnce, tr. Emrna Crawlirrrl ancl Mario vorr dtrl ltrrht' (l,ondon and Nsw York: Routledge, 2002), 16. 2l . Wcil, Cravity and Grace" 19*21 . 22. Enrerson, "History," in Essay.s o.nd Lecturu:s,239. 23. Sce "Introduction: Staying the Course," in Stanlcy Cavcll, Conlilittrr.,'; llutttl. .rttttut ctntl lJnhund,some: 7'he Con,rtitutktn of Erner,toniun, Pedetlionisrn ((llricirgu: I lrrivcrsity of Chicago Prcss, I 990), l-32. 24. S1anley Cavcll, Cities oJ Wrtrtls: Pedugo14it'ol [.etters on a lletgislL'r ol lltt fulrtnrl /.1/t, (Camhridgc: l{arvard Univcrsily Press, 2004), 3l l. 25. C'avoI l, Con tt i t i.ons Ll untlsom e un il l / n lttr,nd,yr tnr e, 3. 26. Frir:drich Nictzscho, "Schoponhaucr as Educulrri' {/ttinrclt' Metlitatirttt;;, lr'. lt. J. l'"lollingclalo (Cartblidgcr: (larnbriclge tlrrivclsily Plcss, l9li3), I25().1,t sct' cspccially 157*"5t3. 27. (lttvcll, 'l'he Wtrlrl l/icvvul,40 41, lt{tl, 213. 28. (.'rtvr: rl' l;'rtrgottart l)rut.nt,t (Ncw Yrlk: ('t'r"rirtivr' l)il'li'rtrrt't's l)trxlttcliortsl() 10). 00; l7:(X). 1') ) 224 William Day 29. Cave of Forg,otten l)reams,00:22:26. 30. Ibid., 00:58:43. 3 1 . Jean Clottes proposes or admits near the end of the frlm: " Homo sapiens*the man who knows. I don't think it's a good definition at all. We don'tknaw', we don'[ know much. I would think Homo spititulis!' Ibid., 01:09:19. 32. Is this the same human heartbeat that opeils Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferanfl There the heartheat accompanies shots of mummilied bodies, initially children's faces, Next to the rock walls, the mummies have the look of a bas-relief, or a 3D cave painting. 33. Peter Zeitlinger, Herzog's longtime cinematographer, is perhaps more properly credited for the patience. 34. See James E. Cutting, et a1., "Quicker, Fa$ter, Darker: Changes in Hollywood Film over 75 Years," i-Perception 2, na. 6 (201 1), 569*:76, (nih'gov). 35. See Werner Herzog, "The Minnesota Declaration"' reprinted in Eric Ames, Ferocious Reality: DocumentatV according to Werner HerTag, ViSible Evidence 27 (Minneapglis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), ix*x, and in the present volume, 379-80, See also David LaRocca, "'Proftrundly Uureconciled to Nature': Ecstatic Truth and the Humanislic Sublime in Werner Herzog's War Films," in The Philosophy ofwar Films, ed. David LaRocca (Lexington: The university Press of Kentucky, 2014),437-82. 36. Cave of Forgotten Dreams,00:14:04. 37. FreshAir interview with Werner Herzog, April 20, 2011,24:41(npr.org). 38. Ebert, review of Swing Time, February 15, 1998 (rogerebert.com). 39, Fresh Air interview with Werner Herzog, April 20, 2011,24 ll; emphasis added. 40. Stanley Cavell, "Fred Astaire Asserts the Right to Praise," in Philosophy the Day after Tomoryow (Carnbridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,'2005)' 78; emphasis added. 41 . Cavell, "something Out of the Ordinary," ia Phitosophy the Day after Tomor' row,15. 42. You may t'eel it is prejudicial for me to say that Astaire (and not his shadows) breaks out of sync: does not such a description depend on what the choreography prescribed, and whg, or which, forgot it? Bgt i as$ume we know that all of them-Astaire and his shadows*dance exactly what the choreography prescribes. That is why the mcrment is f'unny rather than tragic, and why we are shown Astaire suddenly realizing that he must catch up: the dance is going on without hia. 43. Werner Herzog, commentary to the DVD Fitzcarraldo (Beverly Hills, CA: Anchor Bay, 2002), 02:3 5 :25. 44. Cave of Forgotten Dreams, A0;22:14' j-