User Reviews

I am one of those who absolutely adore the stories of Ayla written by Jean Auel. I've read them all several times and am still waiting for the upcoming parts to the story. However, not until now have I seen this movie... and what a disappointment..

There is just too many holes in this story that there's no end to it. I mean, I understand that in -86 there was some things you couldn't make as perfect as you can in modern film - like the looks of the so called Neanderthals of this movie, or the small variations in the clan way of behaving.. But you could at least keep to the story. If you can't make a long enough movie, so you could include all the important details instead of making your own "short version", then why even bother?

I mean just for example: First of all, the way Ayla lost her family and when she saw Iza for the first time. Why change those small things? The way Creb learned her how to speak the Clan way - was it so hard to show more of that, to express how hard that was for her? The way Ayla got her totem, and when! Iza would never have asked Creb to find a totem for her, and why the long time? Uba wasn't supposed to be born! When Iza started training her to become a medicine woman.. It was way earlier in the story than that. Why Ayla decided to hunt even though it was forbidden, and why she learned to throw two stones. When Broud raped her, and why. When Ayla got pregnant, and why she wanted to keep it so badly. Why Broud separates Ayla from Durc when he gets leader.. That Ayla would use her weapon against Broud... that's insane.

And the fact that she would give birth to Durc alone in her cave is just WHAAAT?! Complete mix-up. And that Ayla and Uba would have met one of the Others in the middle of nowhere?! (Jondalar?) I mean that doesn't fit into anywhere.

It's mostly small stuff that I don't understand WHY they would change, but I could have lived with small differences as long as they could've kept to the true story and not cutting it short because of budget or whatever. The relationships between all the characters was never told the way it should, it feels like more than half of it was left out.

If i hadn't read the books beforehand I'm sure I could have appreciated it better, but this simply pisses me off.

It's a shame that such a great story never will be told the way it deserves, because of this.

Entertaining and surprisingly engaging, "The Clan of the Cave Bear" teaches us that there was a time when mankind was divided into two species. Type one – the Neanderthals – had big foreheads, dark hair and a monobrow, while type two – the Cro-Magnons – were tall, blonde and had great teeth.

Ayla, a Cro-Magnon child, is left for dead after being attacked by a lion. However she is found by a nomadic tribe of Neanderthals. They are reluctant to help at first as she belongs to a group they refer to as 'the others'– the Cro-Magnons. This is obvious from her blonde hair and the stylish cut of her animal skins, which also singles out the Cro-Magnons from the more shaggy-looking Neanderthals. A kindly Neanderthal male, Creb, talks the tribe into letting he and his wife Iza take the child with them.

Years pass and Ayla has become one of the Neanderthal tribe despite the fact she has grown tall, blonde and has great teeth. In fact, Ayla has become Daryl Hannah, and although she would have little trouble in reaching the finals of the Miss Cro-Magnon pageant, to the Neanderthals, she is quite ugly and decidedly forehead and eyebrow challenged.

Despite this, one of the young Neanderthal males, Broud, is attracted to her. No doubt, the way Ayla fills out her animal skins caught his eye. In Neanderthal culture, a desire to couple is indicated by the male clasping his hands; the deed then takes place without further ceremony. After Ayla responds to many handclasp signals from Broud, she falls pregnant.

Ayla is also a bit of a tomboy and wants to throw spears, use a slingshot and hang out with the guys target shooting. However this is taboo in Neanderthal culture; the punishment for a woman caught fooling around with the boy's toys is instant death. But Ayla becomes an expert with the slingshot. When a wolf carries off a young Neanderthal boy, Ayla brings the animal down with one shot. Her cover blown, she is forced to demonstrate her skill to the males who will decide her fate; they quickly realise that she has in fact become a prehistoric Annie Oakley with the slingshot.

Although she would normally face death, she is instead banished for the winter. She delivers the baby by herself and survives by using her hunting skills to catch food.

As the years pass, Iza and Cleb grow old and feeble, Ayla on the other hand does not change much at all, she retains her youthful appearance proving that an outdoor life free of smog and pollutants does wonders for Cro-Magnon skin. When the clan joins a great gathering of Neanderthals, another male disregards Ayla's lack of forehead and monobrow and takes a shine to her. This is Brun, and he is everything Broud is not; he is thoughtful, polite and chivalrous. Unfortunately he literally loses his head when the young men of the tribe attack a bear – showing how precarious existence was before the invention of the tranquilliser gun.

Broud becomes leader of the tribe, and his first act is to take Ayla as his wife. When he attempts to separate her from her child Dirk, Ayla refuses and fights him. The tribal elders come to her assistance. Broud is stripped of leadership of the clan as he has failed to uphold the tribe's charter on every possible level.

But now, Ayla, who has developed a markedly spiritual side to her character, decides that her destiny does not lie with the clan. She says goodbye to them all including her child, who is half Neanderthal and destined to become the leader of the clan. She is last seen heading towards the sunset to seek 'the others' to whom she feels she more rightly belongs.

The last scenes are quite moving. Identity and the feeling of belonging are dominant themes in the film. Anthropologists might question some of the liberties taken by the filmmakers, but "Clan of the Cave Bear" is one of those movies where the best thing is to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I am giving four stars for the acting and cinematography, which were excellent.

What bites is the degree to which the movie strayed from the book. Now, I realize that some of this would be inevitable. But the screenwriters took it too far, as if they didn't get the spirit of the books. They essentially made it an altogether different story with the same names. The movie lost me after the first scenes depicting the earthquake and the cave lion attack, which were done well. After that, I didn't recognize it. I'm talking about major differences in both plot and character.

Plot: The movie says Ayla is "the first of the Others that the Clan had seen." What about the man with the broken arm, whom Iza's grandmother had treated for his injuries? It is The Mammoth Hunters, the third book in the series, that finally reveals just who the man was, but the story is told in CotCB.

Plot: Ayla is not pregnant at the time of her exile. She does not give birth in solitude. As a matter of fact, she doesn't even reach full adulthood until long after she is caught using the weapon, the crime for which she is exiled (death cursed) in the first place.

Plot: The movie suggests that no one would provide for Durc simply because Ayla had no mate, and her adopted father could not himself hunt. In fact, the baby was half Cro-Magnon. The Neanderthals had never seen a mixture before and didn't understand the combination of features. They saw Durc as hideously deformed, even more so than Creb. It was for that reason that the men of the Clan had wanted to leave him to die, not just because he would be a welfare child.

Character: Broud has been raping Ayla repeatedly. Like modern rapists, he is actually getting his jollies from making Ayla do something she hates. Finally, during the last rape, she is so happy about being pregnant that she doesn't care anymore and doesn't react. To put it as delicately as possible, this completely deflates Broud, and he can't continue. So far so good. But then one of the women who are watching immediately takes a dig at Broud's wife Oga, using a stick in her hand to illustrate her point, and the women giggle. Mrs. Auel had made it clear in her book that 1.) The Neanderthals were not able to smile or laugh, and 2.) The women are genetically programmed to be so submissive and fearful of the men, that they would never have laughed about a man's shortcomings even if they could.

Character: Brun also is seen smiling, something that he should not have been able to do.

Character: Blond, blue-eyed Ayla is seen as terribly ugly by the Clan, because she is so drastically different. Her height and her propensity for hunting make her, though she seems the ideal of feminine beauty to us, appear to the Clan as something of a butch. So why would Brug, the blue-eyed Clan (which is doubtful) have ignored Uba, a young woman from the highest line of medicine women, in favor of so-called ugly and unladylike Ayla? The movie suggests that had Brug not been killed in the bear ceremony, he would have possibly pursued a mating. I have trouble adapting to that. Which leads me to--

Plot: There is no Brug in the Clan of the Cave Bear book. It was Gorn who was killed in the bear ceremony. Brug doesn't come along until Plains of Passage. He is also known as Brugar, and then he is a different person entirely.

Plot: The hallucination Ayla experiences after she follows the mog-urs into the cave is nowhere near the book. Also, the movie shows Ayla being summoned to the cave, drawn by Creb/Mog-ur's voice calling to her by name. Actually, for her to be there was deadly taboo. The movie did not make this clear.

Plot AND Character: After making Broud leader, Brun would not have had the power to then fire him. And Broud's falling to the ground in abject humility after Brun's chastisement of him would not have happened.

The playing-with-the-echo scene, I understand, is simply a method by which they showed the passage of time as Ayla grew to be a woman. Seemed a little cheesy to me, though. I had wondered why in the heck she would be standing there repeatedly calling out her own name. It took me a few viewings to realize that she was, in fact, playing with an echo.

Kudos to the actors, to the makeup artists, to the people in charge of scenery, etc. Not-so-kudos to the screenwriters. I think they blew it.

I have read Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel several times and I have listened to it on book tape as well.

The book is magnificent. It is not high English Literature, but it is face-paced, engaging, thorough, realistic and very well researched. I have also read the Valley of Horses and the rest of the Earth's Children Series. However, I put Shelters of Stone down because is pales in comparison to her earlier work in Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of Horses.

When I heard a movie had been made, I was both curious and concerned. Curious because I really enjoy the story and the "prehistory" genre - concerned because the vast majority of film adaptations from books are really disappointing.

I really enjoy this film and I now include it in my DVD collection.

The writers and directors did a very brave and wise thing by subtitling the language of the Clan, rather than making the "big dumb cavemen" speak some form of grunting English. They captured the dignity, culture and subtly of the Neanderthals as they were portrayed in Auel's novel, they didn't look like raging men in cheap gorilla suits as they did in Quest for Fire. What could not really be captured was the depth of herb lore and knowledge possessed by Clan, it would not have made for exciting film if a lengthy explanation of plants were included.

I thought Hanna did an excellent job. The reason why they could not use a teen-aged girl was most likely the height factor. Ayla is supposed to tower over even the largest man of the clan, "big and ugly." It would have been very difficult to find a teenager who could not only ACT convincingly in such trying conditions, but who would be tall enough in comparison to the Neanderthals.

The rape scene is horrible, but is realistic and it was necessary to include it. It is a pivotal point in the novel, a moment in time when Ayla's spirit could have been shattered, she suffers as a result and is the stronger for it. I would not let children watch it though, for that scene.

The hunting scene is very well done, it is real and tense and true to the book, so are the clan gathering and the sacrifice of the Cave Bear.

I do not understand how a fan of the book could dislike the movie.

***Spoiler*** The only things I disapprove of are the end when Ayla leaves and the lack of explanation of "Clan memories." In the book, Creb dies and Ayla is cast out of the Clan with her loved ones huddled together under the tyrannical leadership of Broud, which is what would have happened to a people who had become incapable of adapting. There was no satisfying reprimand from Brun, ripping the leadership away from his son, Broud. The ending is way too "Hollywood" and pink, and I do not know why they bothered to change it. The film is real and gritty throughout, why fluff it at the end? The vision of the shared memories that Ayla and Creb have at the Clan gathering is NOT the same as it is in the book. The vision in the book shows the journey through time from the primordial beginnings of life on Earth to the technological future and possible end. It is the main message of Earth's Children (In my opinion) and it is unfortunate that it was altered in this otherwise very meticulous film.

I am very pleased that the film was made, and I am disappointed that it did not get better reviews at the time, it deserved much better. It is quiet and patient and authentic. Real animals are used, no over-the-top musical scores are employed, subtitles and gestures are very well done, casting and costumes are detailed and the camera shots are long and unhurried…. It captures the raw nature of the time.

Although I would be pleased to see Valley of Horses made into a film, to see Thonolan and Jondalar and the rest of the interesting characters and wrenching moments depicted, I hope that a sequel is NOT made… unless someone who is true to the books bothers to pick up the project.

Most Hollywood movies are really awful nowadays and I would doubt that a studio and film-making team would be able to do it justice with the cast and the budget, and the patience they would need to do it right.

Many years ago I tried starting to read Jean M Auel's novel. Despite the fact that it is very much my kind of thing, I could never get into it. So I come to the movie, 25 years after it was made, completely cold.

Its story of a Cro-Magnon orphan being adopted into a tribe of Neanderthals and having to cope with prejudice and antagonism is absolutely fine. The events and motivations all seem entirely reasonable, and who is to say otherwise? The story progresses satisfactorily, is easy to follow (with subtitles and voice-over where necessary), the photography is lush and the performances aren't bad (I don't think you have to be particularly subtle to play an irritable Neanderthal).

But there were a couple of elements which made the suspension of disbelief a little difficult. One was Daryl Hannah's tasty clean-haired blonde Cro-Magnon, just a little bit too 20th centurily gorgeous to convince as a stone age trailblazer for women's lib.

And the other is the Neanderthal wigs. The prosthetics are, for the most part, fine (and appropriate, of course), but the wigs don't cut it, I'm afraid. They are so immobile that they might as well have been cast in plaster, and they scream, "This is an actor in a wig." And, of course, that's exactly what it is, but you don't want it hammered home during every second of screen time.