My review of "Quest For Fire" for a philosphy class in 2006...

If you haven't seen this movie I suggest you do before reading, but here is the trailer if you wanna watch that:


“Quest For Fire” is a movie like no other. Sure there are plenty of other movies set in this time involving cavemen but “Quest For Fire” is in a league of its own. The story is not a new one, it has been told for hundreds of years in many movies and many more books and even through oral tradition. The story is simple for the most part and is even explained in the title of the film, “Quest For Fire”, but that is not the story that has been retold so many times, that story is about the journey man will take when it is time for him to rise to the occasion and become a leader. I am sure many people have watched this movie and walked away thinking its just about some cavemen looking for fire, but it is so much more than that. This story has everything you would find in most Hollywood movies yet you normally would not find all of these things in one film. Themes such as comedy, adventure, romance, and even horror are weaved through out this whole film. I could even go as far as saying this film is the embodiment of the “American dream”. In its simplest form a man takes on a goal and in accomplishing that goal he also finds a life mate and starts a family as well as provided something of value for his community.

The film implies many things about human nature, for starters that as a world we operate on many different levels as a society. In the way of evolution I see this film placing the “humans” into four different classes that could be seen as social classes. The lowest class or the poor being the tribe in the beginning of the film, not very evolved, still very hairy and with out language but still able to form and execute a full blown attack. The middle class would be the cannibal tribe, they are less hairy than the poor but still have no full language but are able to hold down camp long enough to eat a few prisoners yet they are not organized and very fearful of what they do not know. The three class would be of the upper middle class which is the tribe that the movies main focus is on. They know what they need for life to be good and work for that and even search for it instead of keeping captive ones that know this secret, they have some language and even less hair on there bodies. The fourth class would be the upper class which is the clay people that have a developed language, weapons and the secret that all other classes are living and dying for which is that of fire. This movie gets to the very roots of human nature, it shows in a very raw matter how life was thousands of years ago yet if this movie was to be set in modern times it would for the most part of the same story and outcome. And I totally agree with this view of human nature. This is who we are, sure this took place thousands of years ago but in a sense we have not changed all that much in those thousands of years. Even with words people often say little that counts. I could see myself in that tree with my friends waiting for the sabertooth lions to leave so we could continue on our journey.

Much is suggested in the sense of ethics and morality, there is the sense of class division through out the film and even though that class ranking is broken by the end of the film it is still seen and takes some time before that line is crossed, but the “humans” in this film in all classes stuck to their own people when it came to the communities. There was a sense of morality when it came to the clothing in the film, the lowest tribe being still covered in hair did not wear any clothing but all the other tribes being less and less covered in hair wore animal furs but the last tribe which was of a desert people that even though they did not wear full clothing each member of the tribe had some sort of clothing on to cover at least some part of the body so a moral sense was felt. When it came to death there was no real morality, in this time it was survival of the fittest, the strongest man lives sort of deal so when it came down to if someone else had to die for you to live they acted on that. I feel most people in society today would act upon given the right situation, yet they might feel bad about it later which in the film there was none of that. The film suggests that morality was at its earliest stages in this film, some of it was there but a lot of it was not. What is considered moral today was totally different then and that makes perfect since given the advancement in society, but the core of morality is there.

The first stages of philosophy are shown in the film through the creation of fire. Each time in the film a new set of “humans” are shown the creation of fire from rubbing a couple of sticks together you get the feeling of wonder and it is shown in the film almost in a fashion that you feel that way with those people. It is when this happens that you really get to see them thinking about the process that they just viewed and how everything that they hold dear in life came from that simple yet complicated action. Another notable sense of wonder can be seen with the fourth tribe’s creation of the atlatl. The “humans” that are the main focus of the film walk around with spear like weapons the entire film but it is not until near the end of the film when they are introduced to the atlatl, when those spears really become lethal weapons which is also shown when they encounter a couple of hostile “humans” that were once part of their own tribe. The wonder of these new tools, fire and the atlatl, bring the tribe together and make them a more superior tribe in the end. They were able to take what they saw as new technology and blend it in with what they already had.

In terms of religion I do not recall any scenes in this film that touched upon religion or even really even hinted towards it, not even in the sense of awe and wonder moving towards religion. The main tribe of focus and the last tribe show in the film both had what could be seen as “medicine men” but they also could have just been the tribe elder or leader.

Language seemed to play little importance through out the film for early humans until on the journey we meet the final tribe. It seems as if they have their own form of communications and language. All the rest of the tribes do seem as if they have some sort of communication but more in the form of grunts and jesters instead of a real language, but these grunts and jesters prove to work when needing to alarm or get the attention of their fellow man.

In viewing this movie twice since the start of the semester not having seen it since I was in grade school and not having paid attention to it when I did watch it at that age, it has since become one of my favorite films. I now own a copy of it and have had all of my close friends watch it so that I can see how it is that they feel about the movie in its over themes. I think that at a young age this film was hard to watch because of its lack of dialogue but watching it now is very easy being that the story tells its self in a whole new manner compared to most films. This is truly a movie that does not need words to speak.