1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 66: Microcosmos
“A documentary on insect life in meadows and ponds” (IMDb).
I’ll try to be brief. This is the rare masterpiece about which the less is said, the better.
First, what it isn’t: a documentary in David Attenborough’s vein. No attempt is made to explain why these creatures are designed as they are, why they behave as they do, or how they are connected to the ecosystem. This is no sociological treatise. It doesn’t exist to sway one’s opinions or to add to one’s store of knowledge.
Very few words are spoken. They are in French.
There is an English version, narrated by Kristin Scott Thomas:
There is music: classical, new-age. There are idyllic panoramic shots. Surprisingly, it matters that the movie is French: I kept half-expecting to glimpse, at the bottom of the screen, that ant-like, Sisyphean pseudo-peasant, Jean de Florette, hauling building materials across a meadow. The lighting at close range is vivid, if not harsh; at a distance, it is softer, not so unlike the lighting and focus of those gorgeous, delicately pervy, tedious offerings of David Hamilton, that English confectioner of French nubile skin.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My reaction, the first time I viewed Microcosmos, was ho-hum. I’d been hoping for years to see it, ever since it was reviewed by Siskel & Ebert. One afternoon, the Cornell Cinema screened it for children. When I sat down, I noticed a fellow grad student ushering his large brood across the theater row in front of mine. The excited children settled in; the lights were dimmed; clouds appeared on the screen, landscapes came into view, and the first insect protagonists did their numbers. Soon, I was asleep. I slept through the rest of the movie (it isn’t long).
I revisited it last night with Samuel and Daniel, who, insect-like, climbed up and down the furniture and my person the whole while. Even so, they paid attention. Samuel is still talking about Microcosmos today. I, too, itch to see it again.
It’s a good movie to chill out to.
I’ll try to be brief. This is the rare masterpiece about which the less is said, the better.
First, what it isn’t: a documentary in David Attenborough’s vein. No attempt is made to explain why these creatures are designed as they are, why they behave as they do, or how they are connected to the ecosystem. This is no sociological treatise. It doesn’t exist to sway one’s opinions or to add to one’s store of knowledge.
Very few words are spoken. They are in French.
There is an English version, narrated by Kristin Scott Thomas:
A meadow in early morning, somewhere on Earth. Hidden here is a world as vast as our own, where the weeds are like impenetrable jungles, the stones are mountains, and even the smallest pond becomes an ocean. Time passes differently here: an hour is like a day, a day is like a season, and the passing of a season is a lifetime. But to observe this world, we must fall silent now, and listen to its murmurs.The creatures and their habitat remain alien, exotic. Perhaps the movie makes them more so. Dragonflies and bees, grasses and flowers and puddles, are so closely and brightly photographed that they look glossy and artificial, as if they were insect-mannequins perched upon display furniture. (By comparison, their synthetic counterparts in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids appear grittily realistic.) But if magnification makes real insects seem curiously more and less genuine, it also bestows personality on their movements. A viewer is tempted to ascribe human-like intentionity to these bugs – and, also, to the plants, which, in speeded-up sequences, curl themselves up or spread themselves out, or wrap themselves around hapless pollinators.
There is music: classical, new-age. There are idyllic panoramic shots. Surprisingly, it matters that the movie is French: I kept half-expecting to glimpse, at the bottom of the screen, that ant-like, Sisyphean pseudo-peasant, Jean de Florette, hauling building materials across a meadow. The lighting at close range is vivid, if not harsh; at a distance, it is softer, not so unlike the lighting and focus of those gorgeous, delicately pervy, tedious offerings of David Hamilton, that English confectioner of French nubile skin.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My reaction, the first time I viewed Microcosmos, was ho-hum. I’d been hoping for years to see it, ever since it was reviewed by Siskel & Ebert. One afternoon, the Cornell Cinema screened it for children. When I sat down, I noticed a fellow grad student ushering his large brood across the theater row in front of mine. The excited children settled in; the lights were dimmed; clouds appeared on the screen, landscapes came into view, and the first insect protagonists did their numbers. Soon, I was asleep. I slept through the rest of the movie (it isn’t long).
I revisited it last night with Samuel and Daniel, who, insect-like, climbed up and down the furniture and my person the whole while. Even so, they paid attention. Samuel is still talking about Microcosmos today. I, too, itch to see it again.
It’s a good movie to chill out to.
