Butler's Cinema Scene

“FINDING ALTAMIRA” My rating: C+

97 minutes | No MPAA rating

The conflict between science and superstition (not to mention stubbornness and stupidity) is nothing new.

In Hugh Hudson’s “Finding Altamira” a 19th-century archaeologist sees his life and reputation reduced to tatters over his discovery of spectacular prehistoric cave paintings.

Marcelo Sanz de Sautolo (portrayed here by Antonio Banderas) was a wealthy Spaniard and gentleman of leisure.  He was also an amateur scientist who loved getting his hands dirty digging up old things.

In 1879 Sautolo was excavating a cave discovered a few years earlier.  His nine-year-old daughter Maria (Allegra Allen) wandered off from the entrance and stumbled upon a magnificent chamber decorated with drawings of animals — mostly massive bison — rendered in red ochre and black ash.

Sautolo  concluded that this was the work of prehistoric man — but work of undreamed-of sophistication. As it turned out, that was the sticking point. No one — not even Europe’s most acclaimed archaeologists — believed primitive man capable of such efforts.

Sautolo was accused of forging the cave paintings to satisfy his own need for celebrity. Twenty years later he was vindicated posthumously after other such sites were discovered around southern Europe.

The screenplay by Olivia Hetreed and Jose Luis Lopez-Linages employs these historic facts as the backbone for a tale that takes on religion, professional pride and father-child relations.

Golshifteh Farahani, Antonio Banderas

For starters, Sautolo is, if not an atheist, a pragmatic sort with little use for organized religion.  This puts him at odds with his beautiful wife Conchita (Golshifteh Farahani), a true believer torn between her husband and the Church.

And it throws into jeopardy his relationship with young Maria, who shares her papa’s fascination with science and rational thought. In a sense, “Finding Altamira” is a battle for a child’s soul.

The heavy of the piece is a churchman — a bald Rupert Everett coming off as a smug sphincter — whose uses his counseling sessions with the spiritually troubled Conchita to dig dirt on Sautolo. Hw then uses these revelations as ammo in a series of damning newspaper editorials.

The story is narrated by the now-grown Maria, who remains a devoted daddy’s girl.

Truth be told, “Finding Altamira” would probably be more satisfying as a documentary. I’m thinking of the similarly-themed doc “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” by Werner Herzog.

Oh, there are fleeting pleasures — fine cinematography, lush costumes and a reproduction of the cave itself that provides a real sense of the awe with which Sautolo viewed these prehistoric masterpieces.

But there’s gimmickry, too.  Hudson (who achieved overnight fame with “Chariots of Fire” and then slipped quickly into semi-obscurity) tries to enliven things with Maria’s dream sequences, in which the painted animals come roaring to CG life.

Ultimately “Finding Altamira” is a bit too heavy-handed to be totally convincing. But there’s no getting around the cave paintings themselves. They are the real deal.

| Robert W. Butler