leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (02/10/86)
CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Modern feminist issues create havoc in
a society of 35,000 years ago. Darryl Hannah as a career
cavewoman fights prehistoric prejudice. Somehow, though, the
film transcends all that and is really engrossing at times.
A durable genre of fantasy is the prehistoric man melodrama. Cavemen
like Alley Oop and B.C. hang around in our Sunday funny papers. Chic
magazines like the NEW YORKER have cartoons showing how primitive man first
came up with the idea for taxes. Saturday mornings children listen for
caveman calls like "Yabba-dabba-doo!" In films, the stories go back at
least as far as Willis O'Brien's DINOSAUR AND THE MISSING LINK, made for
Edison in 1917. More recently, there were films like ONE MILLION B.C. and a
string of prehistoric films from Hammer. Most recently we have seen the
surprisingly funny CAVEMAN with Ringo Starr, which could have ended the
genre, but we also saw QUEST FOR FIRE, which claimed to be trying for
realism. Now based on the first book of Jean Auel's series about
prehistoric man (and woman) comes CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR.
Somehow the film gave me every reason to hate it, yet I didn't. It is
about an unmarried woman doctor with a child who has to decide if she wants
to settle down with a man or continue with her career. Set it in modern
Manhattan, and you would not want to see this soap opera, but set in 33,000
B.C. this sorry plot had some novelty. Ayla is a Cro-Magnon child
grudgingly adopted by a clan of Neanderthals. The clan's attitude about the
place of women is medieval--which is progressive by Neanderthal standards, I
suppose. This is the story of how Ayla grows up and wanders into the
careers of hunter and medicine woman. Ayla is played by Darryl Hannah. As
a Cro-Magnon she is tall, thin, and blond. This means that she is not squat
enough nor does she have a thick enough forehead or nose to attract a
Neanderthal man so she turns instead to healing and secretly becomes the
first female marksperson.
The story is simple (but then it IS hard to envision what a complex
story about Neanderthals would be like). If it seems anachronistic to put a
feminist in this period, let me assure you if is far more so to have a
dinosaur. Some of the details did bother me. The film gets off to a shaky
start (quite literally) when there is an earthquake that destroys the clan's
home. It seems to be a cliche of prehistoric films that the Earth was just
forming when the action takes place so they have volcanos or earthquakes as
often as we have hailstorms. The question I ask is: how did an earthquake
leave them homeless? It is not like they have skyscrapers to knock over.
They live in huts or caves. Both are pretty earthquake-proof. Any cave that
you find in earthquake country has to be quake-proof. If it isn't, it
wouldn't still be a cave.
Auel's books do have pretty paintings on the cover and the photography
does a good job of creating the same feel.
The story is definitely the weakest part of this film, but for a soap
opera, it is still a watchable film. Give it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper