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The story of the caveman is a tale not told too often by Hollywood,
as usually it is reserved for Ringo Starr comedies. But quite
a few years back, the Jean M. Auel novel The Clan Of The Cave
Bear was finally brought to the big screen, and told the story
about a Cro-Magnon girl being raised by a primitive Neanderthal
people. Auel's series of novels went into great anthropological
detail and were perhaps the best of any popular novels to deal
with the evolution of the cavemen. Unfortunately, like Ringo Starr
comedies, perhaps this was a story best let off-screen...
The Clan Of The Cave Bear is one of those films that is liked
by some, but not very many. Those that enjoyed the original novel
found some disappointment in the film because of its lack of detail.
And there were also viewers that did not want to look past the
subtitles of the film, as the actors only spoke in grunts and
ancient tongues that may or may not be historically accurate.
What is recognized after watching this film is the very good performances
and the beautiful sights to be seen. The film was nominated for
an Oscar for Best Makeup, and it does look wonderful.
I recently revisited the novel and now the film has improved
greatly in my eyes, certainly my appreciation for Daryl Hannah's
performance, and supporting actors Pamela Reed, James Remar and
John Doolittle are also all excellent in the picture. On the downside,
there was some important content that was left out of the film
to aid in either lowering the budget or shortening the theatrical
running time, and the addition of these plot and story elements
from the book would have greatly improved the picture. And to
be honest, there is not much anthropological value here, just
a scenic parable about the way of life of a Neanderthal. The film
never quite reaches Dances With Wolves grandeur, but the scenery
and wildlife are impressive enough and provide some visual interest
for the viewer through the slow sequences.
Now, why would Leonard Maltin consider this film "The world's
first feminist caveman movie?" Most obvious is that the film
is from a woman's point of view, along with the narration by Salome
Jens, thus there is not much of a male influence to be found.
Most of the Y chromosome characters are given nearly no character
development, or they are depicted as bad cavepeople. There is
only one time in the film when Ayla is protected by a man, Creb
(James Remar), who is a respected elder of the Clan. But the majority
of the picture has Ayla as very strong female lead who is the
symbolic representation of the entire downfall of the Neanderthal
way of life. Fairly feminist in nature, but regardless, it is
very nicely done, and hey, I like it.
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
A few years back I came across the singular LaserDisc release
of The Clan Of The Cave Bear. The film was a punched disc and
carried a whopping price tag of $4.88, so I could not pass it
up. This 1987 vintage release by Fox Home Entertainment and presented
in pan & scan only, and the picture quality was far from being
good, but it was cheap. Now, thirteen years later, The
Clan Of The Cave Bear finds a new life on DVD thanks to Warner
Home Video. More importantly, the film is presented in its original
2.35:1 aspect ratio, and anamorphic widescreen to boot. The film
takes part mostly in the great outdoors and after seeing the widescreen
edition of the film, it becomes easily apparent that much is lost
in the pan and scan process. If you don't trust me on this, you
can check for yourself, as Warner Bros. has been kind enough to
include the full screen version on the reverse side of the DVD.
The picture quality of the film is greatly improved, but far
from being spectacular. Most noticeable in the improvement department
is the perfect black level of scenes throughout the film and the
lack of noise and dirt in the actual picture. Less than a handful
of white specks showed up on the DVD, while the LaserDisc was
riddled with them. The film does suffer a bit from heavy film
grain and lack of detail, but still improves over the Laser. The
colors and contrast are very good, but some scenes could have
benefited from greater color saturation, particularly a sky scene
or two. The only real complaint is that the subtitles to allow
us to understand the cavepeople have not been redone or touched
up and are near translucent in some outdoor scenes. It can be
difficult to read what is going on. Let us not forget though,
that the good people at Warner did see fit to deliver The Clan
Of The Cave Bear in anamorphic widescreen. It is nice to see a
studio do so for a film that will most likely not move a tremendous
amount of copies
Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?
Warner went to the trouble of creating a new anamorphic transfer
of the picture, but they cinched a bit in the sound department.
The DVD preserves the films original stereo surround track and
does not see a new Dolby Digital multi-channel mix. The grunting
of the Neanderthals does not suffer much because of this, but
there are some very good ambient moments that would have been
top notch with a new Dolby Digital mix. The Alan Silvestri score
is good and would have sounded extremely good with six glorious
channels.
The Dolby Pro-Logic Surround mix is not terribly disappointing.
It does hold up well against the LaserDisc version and sounds
slightly cleaner. The sound levels of the film are a bit low,
and this mainly hurts the rear surrounds which contains the Silvestri
score and some ambient noise. The majority of the film comes from
the center channel. The left and right channels chime in during
various moments to help the film sound better, but the center
channel does more than average work during The Clan Of The Cave
Bear. We have a nice new widescreen transfer, so I guess asking
to eat the cake would be a bit much.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
Here at DVDFILE.com, we are dedicated to covering the supplemental
material of each individual DVD in greater depth. Occasionally,
a studio seems fit to give us, the writers, a short vacation.
Such is the case with The Clan Of The Cave Bear. There is nothing
here. I would have loved a commentary track by the author or the
person in charge of makeup, but alas, we don't even get any production
notes. Poor Ayla. (Editor's Note: There was an announced
extended cut of this film announced for laserdisc a few years
back, but it never materialized. No explanation was ever given
for its cancellation...)
Parting Thoughts
I was happy to see my LaserDisc go the way of the Do-Do Bird.
Warner did well in some ways with this release. This is a title
that seemed destined for the pan & scan only, $14.95 treatment,
but we get a nice anamorphic transfer and a decent sondtrack.
Not a bad deal if you can get it at a discount.
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