Earth, 80,000 years ago. A tribe of prehistoric humans lives inside a cave, supported by fire burning inside an improvised lamp, used to cook, keep the animals away and create spears. They are attacked by a tribe to ape-like homo erectus, who try to steal their fire. While escaping, the prehistoric human tribe flee through a lake, which extinguishes the fire. Three men are sent to find fire and bring it back. They save a girl from a cannibalistic tribe that uses fire to cook humanoids. The girl joins the trio of prehistoric humans. The tribe of the girl capture one of them, but the other two help him escape. Another one is attacked and wounded by a bear in a cave, so the other one carries him. They bring back the fire back to their tribe, but it is extinguished in the lake. Luckily, the girl uses friction on two sticks to ignite fire.
The director Jean-Jacques Annaud seems to have been so fascinated with the opening segment depicting prehistoric humanoids in ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' that he decided to make a whole movie dedicated to them, but a little more closer to modern times. Set 80,000 years ago, the film has no dialogue except for grunting, and depicts a raw, primordial and basic state of mind back in that times, and thus the movie uses raw, primordial and basic means to conjure up that feeling for the viewers. Watching it, the viewers immediately get two impressions—what enormous effort is accumulated in generations spaning tens of thousands of years in order for us to survive up until this day; and what a blessing technology and civilization are, which surpassed such a dreadful state. The opening is already gruesome in its details—three prehistoric women go to a creek for water, bend down, revealing their butts from underneath their leather clothing, so one prehistoric man sneaks up behind one to have sex.
Their tribe is attacked by ape-like humanoids, probably homo erectus, and as the prehistoric humans want to exit their cave, the enemy throws rocks from above them. It shows how there were several humanoid subspecies, and there was simply a too big intellectual rift between some, such as the violent ape-like ones and cannibals, one cannot reason with them nor know why they are acting the way they do, as opposed to prehistoric humans who were at least rudimentary human. There is chaos, madness, primitvism and cruelty in this savage world, but also one wonderful moment of compassion which breaks it—after the hero caveman saves a girl, covered all in grey paint (excellent Rae Dawn Chong, whose face is very expressionistic thanks only to her two eyes visible behind this paint), she later walks up to him and shows gratitude by giving him improvised medicine for his wounds. Even elephants have make up, when they wear fur to appear as mammoths some halfway into the film. Some heavy handed moments bother, and thus ''Quest for Fire'' is only a rump forerunner to Annaud's excellent and similar minimalistic nature drama ''The Bear'', filmed 7 years later. However, even though these characters are ugly, backward and unrecognizeably looking behind the caveman make-up, when the man and the woman are sitting and hugging each other, at the end of the day they have become more human.
Grade:++
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