This is the tale of Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (Antonio Banderas) and his nine year old daughter Maria (Allegra Allen) who discovered the prehistoric paintings in "The Caves of Altamira". The discovery was initially proclaimed as monumental, but was then rejected by his peers as a forgery. The story opens with Maria as an adult and ends with her as adult when her humiliated father was publicly exonerated in "Mea culpa d'un sceptique" in 1902. It shows the church aggressively opposing any aspect of evolution and attempting to use the overly religious wife against her husband.
It's Antonio Banderas who always does an excellent job playing a Spaniard. The acting was good, but the drama, like real life was lacking at times. We see the church forcing the daughter to stand in the corner for comparing man's wrist bones to bats etc. We see confrontation with the church in debates and Sautuola in his own world. There are a few father-daughter scenes that could have been more touching and they needed to play the Steely Dan song during the credits.
I am a sucker for good history and biopic. Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.
On a side note astronomer Frank Edge claims the works are depictions of their view of the stars/constellations. From Art History Worlds: "Altamira Cave, Spain, 15,500 years ago: star pictures in a cave painting. Edge found another famous cave at the southern edge of Magdalenian territory, with a second mural that he correlated to the stars. While the Lascaux painting depicts just those constellations along the ecliptic, Altamira's is more ambitious in scope, with the cave wall organized to represent the entire visible night sky. Selected stars are depicted among all that would have appeared through the spring nights, from sunset to sunrise, from the horizon all the way up to the pole. Those closest to the Pole, the circumpolar stars that never set, are nicely arranged across the top of the mural. At the bottom are Scorpius, Leo and Taurus, the stars then seen along the horizon. The painting is dated at 13,500 B.C."
It's Antonio Banderas who always does an excellent job playing a Spaniard. The acting was good, but the drama, like real life was lacking at times. We see the church forcing the daughter to stand in the corner for comparing man's wrist bones to bats etc. We see confrontation with the church in debates and Sautuola in his own world. There are a few father-daughter scenes that could have been more touching and they needed to play the Steely Dan song during the credits.
I am a sucker for good history and biopic. Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.
On a side note astronomer Frank Edge claims the works are depictions of their view of the stars/constellations. From Art History Worlds: "Altamira Cave, Spain, 15,500 years ago: star pictures in a cave painting. Edge found another famous cave at the southern edge of Magdalenian territory, with a second mural that he correlated to the stars. While the Lascaux painting depicts just those constellations along the ecliptic, Altamira's is more ambitious in scope, with the cave wall organized to represent the entire visible night sky. Selected stars are depicted among all that would have appeared through the spring nights, from sunset to sunrise, from the horizon all the way up to the pole. Those closest to the Pole, the circumpolar stars that never set, are nicely arranged across the top of the mural. At the bottom are Scorpius, Leo and Taurus, the stars then seen along the horizon. The painting is dated at 13,500 B.C."