Quest for Fire (1981)

I chose this streaming flick next mainly for the 100 minutes it runs, since I was killing time. In retrospect, it has just enough in common with The Revenant that I should have waited. There's even a survived bear mauling, albeit not very important to the story.

Based on  J.-H. Rosny aîné's most popular novel, this is one of the few movies I can name set in caveman days. The English title is pretty straightforward: A tribe who doesn't know how to make fire yet sends three men to find some. (This may be rude of me, but director Jean-Jacques Annaud never had a better reason to cast Ron Perlman, who debuted on the silver screen here.) Most of the dangers they face come from other tribes, but one woman from a more advanced village, upon getting saved from cannibals, proves helpful.

I previously knew Rosny for sci-fi novellas whose premises wouldn't fly today. It's interesting to see him try for realism this time, especially since most stories set that long ago get deliberately silly to avoid boring us. I think he mostly succeeds for a writer with 1911 knowledge. Few moments give a non-prehistorian like me any pause on that score. Then again, I can't tell how much the filmmakers may have changed from the book.

I can give them credit for patience. From what I read, it was very challenging on multiple levels. We viewers then must exercise a little patience ourselves: The pace is slow outside of adventurous moments, brown and gray dominate the color scheme, and there's essentially no dialog. Oh, the main men speak a few syllables once in a while, and the main woman chatters a lot more, but the language, which Anthony Burgess invented, gets no subtitles. I had no idea of any character's name before the credits.

Animal lovers may express concerns about real animals being outfitted to look like their ancestors. Specifically, we see lionesses with fake saber teeth and elephants with fake mastodon hair. I'm not sure how the makers handled the spark of fire on a wolf/dog near the beginning either, considering that nothing was added in post-production.

Of greater concern to me is the sexual element. On this matter, the cavemen are basically animals, giving no regard to privacy or consent...which doesn't stop the main woman from falling in love with one anyway. I can believe that this sort of thing happened regularly 80,000 years ago, but do we have to see it? And does the woman have to wear only body paint most of the time? It's hard to see this as a pure desire for realism instead of pandering to the basest of male instincts. (And no, women from that era don't do much for me.)

From a technical standpoint, Quest for Fire is impressive. From an emotional standpoint, it made me want to take a shower, tho I guess that's inevitable when the characters badly need one. I'm not sorry I watched, but proceed with caution.