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CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR
Rating: 
USA. 1986.
Director – Michael Chapman, Screenplay – John Sayles, Based on the Novel by Jean M. Auel, Producers – Jerry Isenberg & Stan Rogow, Photography – Jan de Bont, Music – Alan Silvestri, Makeup – Jack Bricker, Michele Burke, Steve Johnson & Michael Westmore, Production Design – Anthony Masters. Production Company – Jozak-Decade/Jonesfilm/The Guber-Peters Co/Sidney Kimmel/Producers Sales Organisation.
Cast:
Darryl Hannah (Ayla), James Remar (Creb), Pamela Reed (Iza), Thomas G. Waites (Broud)
Plot: 35,000 years ago. A young blonde child of the new emerging Cro-Magnon people is adopted by a Neanderthal tribe after having been abandoned when her mother is killed in an earthquake. But growing up among the Neanderthals, Ayla as she is named is disadvantaged by not having the tribe’s racial memories and makes frequent mistakes in tribal custom that create a difficult life for her. But she has greater intelligence than any of the Neanderthals and uses it to challenge traditional prerogatives in the world of men by learning the use of weapons that are forbidden to women.
Clan of the Cave Bear is based on the first in the best-selling series of books by Jean M. Auel. Clan of the Cave Bear (1981) was the first of Auel’s and as of this writing she has since published four others – The Valley of the Horses (1982), The Mammoth Hunters (1985), The Plains of Passage (1990) and The Shelters of Stone (2002). The Earth’s Children series, as they are collectively known, essentially tell stories of prehistoric feminism, wherein Auel’s protagonist Ayla improbably ends up discovering and witnessing much of early civilization.
This film version of Clan of the Cave Bear was adapted by John Sayles, who was then only a writer for hire and not quite the acclaimed independent filmmaker that he is today with the likes of Matewan (1987), Passion Fish (1992), The Secret of Roan Inish (1995), Lone Star (1996) and Men With Guns (1997). Sayles had adapted both Clan of the Cave Bear and Jean M. Auel’s immediate sequel, The Valley of the Horses, in an ambitious plan to originally film both together, although Valley would never emerge due to the indifferent reception that Clan received.
The director assigned to the project was Michael Chapman, then a successful cinematographer on the likes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and most of Martin Scorsese’s films including Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award). Chapman had made his directorial debut with the Tom Cruise teenage drama All the Right Moves (1983), although All the Right Moves and Clan of the Cave Bear arethe only of three films Michael Chapman has directed so far. Chapman returned to primal wilderness films with The Viking Sagas (1995), but that was not a success either.
Never having found sufficient interest to read the books, one isn’t in a position to comment on the adaptation, but the fact that Ms Auel saw fit to sue the filmmakers over the final product should be apposite comment. Certainly fans of the books have been fairly vocal in their disapproval. And the film isn’t a particularly good one. Chapman tries earnestly and shoots some often impressive imagery – and the Yukon locations look quite magnificent. But it is all rather unconvincing. First of all the film is encumbered by having to tell a complex story while relying only on narration, subtitled dialogue and sign language to relay the narrative. The whole point of prehistoric films such as these hinges on being able to believe that one is seeing cave-people running about on screen and casting a recognizable face like Darryl Hannah is not an act that particularly engenders any suspension of disbelief – all that one sees is a Hollywood actress in furs. Some of the anthropology is rather dubious – the real issue in the primitive dentistry session should be whether Neanderthal people would actually have any teeth to knock out in the first place. And when you have some countries in the 20th Century where a life expectancy is still only the mid-forties the whole issue of elder respect is really whether any of them would live long enough to reach old age. The script toys with some interesting ideas about ancestral memory and Jungian symbolism but John Sayles never develops them in a tenable way.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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