Finding Altamira’s opening sequence is dazzling, full of narrative verve and cinematic power. It consists of two parallel-edited scenes, one at an anthropological discussion in 1870s Paris and another in a contemporaneous northern Spanish cathedral. The scholars are launching an intellectual assault on the foundations of Western knowledge and the priests are fighting to conserve traditional ways of knowing and doing. Unfortunately, this introductory sequence is the last exciting one in the entire film.
From there, the film resorts to three very well-worn conventions: a costume period piece; a classically (read: boringly) constructed and edited narrative; and a long-settled debate over whether science and religion can peaceably coexist. On the latter point, the film not only rekindles an argument already resolved, but it does so in an offensive way that both fails to add new ideas but also distortedly reifies each category—“religion” and “science”—for the sake of dramatic necessity. It exacerbates a debate that no one even has anymore as a plot device. That the only conflict Finding Altamira can unearth from its rich source material is a false dichotomization between science and religion that does violence to each side is emblematic of the film’s myriad issues.
Most of us have seen this kind of film before. There is a leading man, Marcelino (Antonio Banderas), his wife whose role is stunted by the script, Conchita (Golshifteh Farahani) and their adorable daughter María (Allegra Allen). The plot is two-pronged, with one conflict being familial and the other societal. For the familial plotline, Finding Altamira smashes Marcelino’s rationalism against Conchita’s Catholicism (and, yes, both characters are so one-note as to be summarized in a single term) and refracts this through their childrearing practices. The filmmaking here is ham-fisted, so that Marcelino is blatantly championed as the hero embattled by his obstinate wife. These are old arguments reduced to their safest and most boring points.
The societal conflict in the plot is centered on the titular discovery of the Altamira cavern by Marcelino and María. The cave features paintings of buffalos that Marcelino dates to the Paleolithic period. This is a shocking postulation that challenges the basic paradigms of prehistoric humans held by scholars at that time. This theory also further infuriates a Church growing increasingly defensive about science in the wake of Darwin. So, arrayed against Marcelino is a whole cast of priests, townspeople and other anthropologists. There is both a teleological edge—the viewer knows that Marcelino is right regarding his anthropology—and an old-fashioned embittered secularism that reduces the Church to a single sermonizing buffoon to this particular plotline. The “good guys” and “bad guys” are obvious—and they are guys, as women other than Conchita are silent and invisible. The outcome is equally obvious.
With such a heavy-handed narrative, the viewer does not actively engage with Finding Altamira; instead, the viewer merely looks at the screen and waits for the plot to resolve in its predictable fashion. And the film is disappointingly faithful to hitting its marks. Mixed in with the dull family and social intrigue is a silly magical-realist subplot involving María, presumably an attempt at being more culturally-appropriate (but if director Hugh Hudson really wanted that, the film would be in Spanish), an aborted romantic subplot between Conchita and a friend of Marcelino’s and lots of angry, stammering men making asses of themselves in ridiculous period dress.
What is particularly disheartening about the unabashedly predictable plot is that it squanders the energetic and unexpected cinematography of José Luis Alcaine. The camera placement throughout the film always startles. It is particularly noteworthy in shifting from restless horizontal pans to Alex Ross Perry-esque super-close-ups to ankle-height upward two-shots when capturing one-on-one conversations. The photography, especially the camera’s general kinetic state, inject into Finding Altamira the sort of cinematic excitement promised in the opening parallel-edited sequence. Unfortunately, the plot’s unerring adherence to the most banal narrative structure stultifies and overwhelms even Alcaine’s craftsmanship.
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