Quest for Fire (film)

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This article is about the film. For the album by Kardinal Offishall, see Quest for Fire: Firestarter, Vol. 1.

For the novel on which the film is based, see Quest for Fire.

Quest For Fire
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jean-Jacques Annaud
Produced by	Jacques Dorfmann John Kemeny Véra Belmont Denis Héroux Michael Gruskoff
Written by	Gérard Brach (screenplay) J.-H. Rosny aîné (novel)
Starring	Everett McGill Rae Dawn Chong Ron Perlman Nameer El-Kadi
Music by	Philippe Sarde
Cinematography	Claude Agostini
Editing by	Yves Langlois
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	February 12, 1982
Running time	100 min.
Country	Canada France United States
Language	None
Budget	$12,500,000
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Quest for Fire (French: La Guerre du feu) is a 1981 film based on the 1911 French novel by J.-H. Rosny aîné (1856–1940). Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and adapted by Gérard Brach, the film stars Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi, and Rae Dawn Chong. It won the Academy Award for Makeup. Michael D. Moore was the associate producer in charge of action & animal scenes.

1 Plot summary
2 Cast
3 Historical accuracy
4 External links
5 See also

[edit] Plot summary

Male members of the Wagabu tribe invade the Ulam tribe's territory, and a battle breaks out. The Wagabus are depicted as animal-like savages, covered in hair, who show no sign of mastering advanced tools or fire, and demonstrate scant evidence of language. Despite this, the Wagabus manage a victory over the Ulams, using superior numbers, brute force, and cunning strategic skills. Some of the Ulams escape, leaving casualties on both sides. The Ulams' fire tender escapes with the tribe's remaining fire (the rest was stolen by the Wagabus), but then accidentally extinguishes it, just when he finds the remnants of the tribe. Without fire, they are doomed to freezing and starvation. So the Ulams, not wishing to turn to cannibalism, decide to send three men, Naoh (Everett McGill), Amoukar (Ron Perlman) and Gaw (Nameer El-Kadi), out on a dangerous quest for fire. During their journey, they encounter several different kinds of wild beasts and other primitive sub-species of human beings.

Eventually, the Ulam scouting trio enters territory of the Kzamm tribe, who (in some cases) resort to capturing members of the Ivaka tribe as cannibalistic victims. Despite the Kzamm's brutish culture, low social status, and inhuman practices, they are masters at the art of producing fire. Naoh manages to steal some fire from the Kzamms, but he is injured in a fight with two of them. He rejoins Gaw and Amoukar. A young woman named Ika (Rae Dawn Chong), an Ivaka prisoner who escapes with Naoh, follows them seeking protection. Despite attempts by Amoukar to drive her off, she follows, eventually taking advantage of a food-gather by Amoukar and Gaw to approach Naoh. She makes a primitive poultice, helping him recover from his injury.

The four begin their trek towards the Ulam, followed by the Kzamm. Attacked by the hostile tribe, the group take advantage of a wandering herd of mammoths to make good their escape. While they travel back towards the Ulam grounds, Amoukar attempts to make a pass at Ika: she hides near Naoh, who then shows his bond with her by forcing sex upon her in front of the other two males. Ika and Naoh continue to bond.

One day, Ika recognizes that she is near her home. She tries to persuade the Ulam trio to go with her, but either lack of a common language or a sense of purpose keeps them on their way back to the Ulam. When Ika leaves them the next morning, Naoh is upset and at first continues on without her, but finds that he can not stop thinking about her. He turns around, followed by the reluctant Gaw and Amoukar. Naoh leaves the others behind to scout a village and is ambushed by the Ivakas.

At first, he is teased and subjected to several forms of humiliation, but eventually the Ivaka accept him and show him their ways. The Ivaka tribe is the most advanced tribe depicted. They have atlatls, arts (body painting, huts, ornaments, primitive pottery), and most importantly, fire. When Naoh is taught how to make fire, he is overwhelmed and his life is changed forever.

Growing impatient, Gaw and Amoukar go to find Naoh and are also captured. During their ordeal, they are disturbed to realize that one of the teasers is Naoh, initially unrecognizeable as he now wears the full body-paint of the Ivaka. Gaw and Amoukar escape during the night, 'persuading' Naoh to come along by knocking him unconscious. Ika, realizing she loves Naoh, follows the trio and helps them escape.

On their way back to the Ulam tribe, the four are discovered by Rouka, Naoh's rival as dominant male of the tribe. Left by Naoh and Amoukar to guard the fire with Ika, Gaw is severely wounded in a fight with a mother cave bear, barely managing to escape. The other three members of the group find Gaw, and Amoukar carries him over his shoulder. When attacked by the Ulam rivals, the group uses several spear throwers stolen from the Ivaka. Using them to dispatch their enemies, they demonstrate the advantages of embracing new technologies.

Upon rejoining the Ulam tribe, the fire tender, having been given the flame, falls in the water, extinguishing the fire. Naoh tries to create fire by using some sticks, dung and dry grasses. After several failed attempts, Ika takes over, carefully rubbing the dry sticks together. Once the spark is lit, the tribe is overjoyed, cheering and overwhelmed.

In the end, Naoh discovers that Ika is pregnant with their child. Naoh carresses Ika while gazing at the brightly lit moon, leaving viewers with perhaps a hope for posterity and the contemplation of the future of human development with the embrace of science and technology.

[edit] Cast

Everett McGill ... Naoh
Ron Perlman ... Amoukar
Nicholas Kadi ... Gaw (as Nameer al-Kadi)
Rae Dawn Chong ... Ika

[edit] Historical accuracy

The story takes place 80,000 years ago, likely in Europe and Africa during the last major Ice Age. However, in the commentary accompanying the DVD release, the director Annaud stated a much earlier date would actually have been more reasonable if he had made the film recently with modern knowledge of the subject matter. It focuses on a group of Paleolithic humans who travel their dangerous world in search of a flame to rekindle their lost fire. In the era of Quest for Fire, not all people know how to produce it at will. This film demonstrates the difficulty of keeping a fire going under the harsh conditions of the primordial past.

The anthropology in the film was ahead of its time; four separate groups are represented: the Ulam, Kzamm, Wagabus and Ivaka. The Wagabus are the most primitive tribe, representing Homo erectus, the Kzamm and Ulam are Neanderthals and Ivaka are more or less the modern Homo sapiens who emerged in Africa.

It should be noted that the Wagabu tribe is depicted as distinctly morphologically different and less advanced than the Kzamm and may be interpreted as Homo heidelbergensis. At the time of the film, H. heidelbergensis was simply considered an archaic version of the Neandertal rather than a separate species. The dating techniques now used to firmly place the two different species in different stages of the Pleistocene epoch did not exist at the time of the film. This is why in the documentary of the film both the Wagabu and Kazamm tribe were referred to as Neanderthals even though the former lacked the language, morphology, and advancements of the latter.

The invented language spoken by the prehistoric humans was created by Anthony Burgess. The gestural and body language was overseen by Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape. The story was difficult to tell without any dialog in a recognizable language, but the cave people's language (a combination of signs and speech) worked well; along with the natural visual tapestry, the language was one of the most successful attractions of the film^{[citation needed]}.