QUEST FOR FIRE: Just what it says, but entirely different!
Written: Feb 16 '00 (Updated Mar 13 '01)
Product Rating:
Pros: A unique, funny, thought-provoking adventure explaining how we became civilized Human Beings.
Cons: Some will find characters difficult to recognize or understand, their accomplishments crude and trivial.
The Bottom Line: QUEST FOR FIRE: most accomplished film of a sub-genre which includes THE LOST WORLD (Hoyt, 1925), ONE MILLION B.C. (Roach[s] 1939), CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR (Chapman, 1986).
French Director Jean-Jacques Annaud should be more acclaimed and better known. Working slowly, over 20 years, he has made several original and interesting films in unique genres.
One of these, QUEST FOR FIRE (1982), tells the story of nothing more or less than how we became human. In its visual style very much like the opening sequence of 2001 (Kubrick, 1968), the film, based on ideas by Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape), and made with his consultation on body language, we follow a clan of our forebears, 80, 000 years ago, as they earn their daily carrion. They fend off attacks by apes and wolves but lose their precious fire in their struggles. In extremis, the clan sends out three of their number to find more of the vital, mysterious element.
They trek across a wild landscape, and in a series of exciting, funny, grotesque adventures, they actually discover how to generate fire, rather than simply finding it after a lightning strike or other natural accident.
In the intense cold, Rae Dawn Chong also persuades one of the team to make love face to face. Eureka! Which I suppose also has something to do with our learning to be human.
As you watch this film, think of how fatuous are our assumptions: Look at Me! The Internet will solve our problems! Business is our Future! Aren't we in the new Millenium!?
We are still, in many ways, a spark away from oblivion.
QUEST FOR FIRE'S characters speak in a strange gibberish with gestures, invented by another consultant, Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange). Their dialogue is translated in subtitles, as if we were listening to a foreign language, and so we are -- The Language of Whoweoncewere!
Three of the cast have had long careers in film: Elliot McGill, Ron Perlman, and of course, Rae Dawn Chong (Tommy's daughter). And yet, with the possible exception of Rae Dawn, I remember them best in the heavy wigs and make-up that won an Academy Award.
The film, as with most Annaud projects, was shot in far places: Kenya, Scotland, Iceland and Canada. He uses all the landscapes in unforgettable ways. (I still remember . . . Ron Perlman, is it? -- up a kind of Monkey Puzzle tree on a barren plain).
If you like QUEST FOR FIRE, you might want to rent several other Annaud works, some familiar, some less so. They are, in their own way, just as far out. Try BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR (Best Foreign Film, 1976), THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986), THE BEAR (1989) or SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET (1997).
QUEST FOR FIRE is a good film to watch over and over just after you have received your MBA from Harvard, or come back from a long, hard Chamber of Commerce Meeting.
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