Clan of the Cave Bear, The (1986)

reviewed by
Shane Burridge


The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) 100m.

Not even writer John Sayles could save this version of Jean Auel's overblown prehistoric soap opera, but at least he knew well enough not to direct it. Film covers the events of the first volume of Auel's saga, which grew ever more ridiculous by the book, but doesn't distinguish itself from many other cave-people movies. As always, there is one member of the tribe that is a little smarter than the others who ends up ostracized or outcast. In this case, it's Ayla (Daryl Hannah), a Cro-Magnon who is adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals while a young girl. She takes up with the tribe's shaman and medicine woman, and learns to fend for herself. Much of this is to the consternation of the uptight chief's son Broud, next in line for leadership of the tribe and in need of a good does of primal scream therapy. Story's idea of one Cro-Magnon co-existing with Neanderthals is a promising one, set as it is within a fascinating nexus of human history (the Neanderthals rely on race memory, while Ayla is able to learn new concepts as they arise). Unfortunately, there is outwardly too little that separates Ayla from the tribe. Sure, she's blonde and statuesque, but she's also Daryl Hannah, so naturally she's going to stand out regardless of who she's with , and especially in a cast of non-star players (look out for a young, pre-BAYWATCH Nicole Eggert as the teenage incarnation of Ayla).

The film's major failing point is that it's simply not authentic enough (despite Auel's intensively-researched source material and the technical credit 'Primitive Skill Training'!)): The cave dwellers of CLAN end up being nothing more than a bunch of actors in fluffy wigs, Hannah's teeth are too perfect, and the film overlooks the inconvenient fact that the average lifespan of a caveman was 18. Instead of filming it in beautiful British Columbia, the film-makers could have opted for a grittier look. Rather than pitch for a PG audience, they could have presented the living conditions of the primitives in a harsher light, with nature red in tooth and claw (Bart the bear, who was terrifically ferocious in THE EDGE, once again gives the best performance in the movie). CLAN seems like a catalogue of second-best decisions, but it could have been worse, and the film-makers did at least get one thing right: they elected to tell their story through subtitles and voice-over narration rather than have the actors grunt their way through the dialogue. And it does improve on the book in one respect - it only takes an hour and a half to get through. Still, Jean Jacques-Annaud covered the same ground with more integrity in QUEST FOR FIRE, and if you pitted the two tribes from those films together, it would be a pretty safe bet that the CLAN group would have the living coprolite beaten out of them.


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