he Ulam tribe ekes out a precarious existence 80,000 years ago,
their
lives utterly dependent on the fire they carry from place to place in a special
bowl. They
honor the fire and respect its power, especially since their talent at
preserving it is not
accompanied by the skill to start new fires at will. This shortcoming proves a
major disaster
when the tribe is forced to flee an all-out assault by another tribe. Ousted
from their
sheltering cave, the Ulam face death by freezing when their only existing flame
is dunked
in a nearby swamp.
The only solution is for somebody to go out and find more fire,
and the task
falls to Naoh (McGill) and his two companions (Perlman, El-Hadi). Leaving the
Ulam
behind, they search the countryside for another life-preserving flame. Along
the way, they
face numerous dangers, including a hungry sabertooth and a band of marauding
cannibals.
It is while battling the cannibals, and stealing their fire, that
the trio discovers
something that may be even more helpful in the long run. The newly freed
prisoners of
the cannibals include Ika (Chong), a member of the Ivaka tribe, who adorn
themselves
with clay markings, and who have pioneered many innovations far beyond the
relatively
primitive Ulam: among them laughter, the missionary position and (most
importantly) the
means of starting fire. Of course, it isn't long before Naoh realizes he wants
more than fire
from the Ivaka. He wants Ika along permanently ...
A film that starts more fires than one
There have been so many caveman movies over the years that they qualify as a
separate genre. Most, like Quest for Fire, used made-up primitive languages
rather
than contemporary speech, but that was the only real concession to period
flavor. Most
threw accuracy to the winds and placed their prehistoric humans in close
proximity with
dinosaurs, of either the stop-motion or the poorly-disguised-giant-Gila-monster
variety.
Quest for Fire was different. No less fanciful—in that we're expected to
believe that
its trio of questing heroes can travel all the way from a frozen swamp in
Europe to a warm
plain in Africa and return before the miserable tribe they left behind
lose any
members or even change their seating positions—it nevertheless deserves
a place of honor
among its fellow specimens for its sense of verisimilitude. These cavemen aren't
photogenic, well-scrubbed stars in fake-fur bikinis. They're dirty, they're
vulnerable to the
elements, they have bad teeth, they seem to be discovering everything around
them for the
first time ... and they seem far more human than most of the protagonists of more
conventional films. Their adventures seem to matter.
The film seems to have everything. There's humor, perhaps best
embodied by
the sequence where our heroes, treed by a hungry lion, eat every leaf on every
branch
while they wait for the persistent feline to leave. There's martial artistry,
as in the bloody
life-and-death battle with a tribe of cannibals. There's ribaldry: a bit of
business where a
captive finds himself obliged to service all the women of the clay people.
There's slapstick:
a scene near the end where one character exercises his recent discovery that a
rock,
landing on an unsuspecting victim's head, is funny. There's adventure, there's
horror,
there's a series of hair's-breadth escapes, and there's even wonder. The film
genuinely
makes you feel the awe its primitive heroes feel for innovations, like fire,
that the modern
world takes for granted.
Finally, there's the love story, which the film would have us
consider the first
love story. Naoh, driven to distraction by the constant jabbering of the clay
woman so
winsomely played by Rae Dawn Chong, ultimately decides he can't live without
her. It's a
decision that's even more affecting when it comes from a hero whose culture has
not yet
developed the concept of romantic love. He clearly feels what he feels. He
clearly doesn't
understand why. And though she's clearly more advanced than he is, she feels it
too. It's a
love story without understandable dialogue that nevertheless resonates and
lingers.
