Friday, April 13
Microcosmos
dir. Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou, France 1996

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Movies were made for so many reasons, including exploration of people and places not readily accessible by a public concerned with their own lives. That’s why filmmakers exist and in “Microcosmos”, to see a few ants take to a puddle of water, to watch raindrops being slurped on slowly, to see a rainstorm become a huge event at that level of ground, is staggering. This is a world that can’t even be seen properly by leaning close enough to roaming ants and who would readily want to? Once in a while, a cadre of ants chowing on a dead fly is fascinating to watch. They move the body sideways. One of them climbs on top of the head. Each one has a piece. Sounds a little like the working world. Looking further into this world, even a bird is huge and uncomfortable to look at from the ants’ point of view. This behemoth pecks at them, content with a snack of a few of them. Meanwhile, the frog croaks and life continues. “Microcosmos” is that rare film to lead us, to reiterate why the camera is just as important as the paintbrush, keyboard, pen, chunks of clay, and anything else that can be used to make art. This is art. The lives of the many on wet and dry ground, on wide and chewed leaves, on blades of grass, is art in that our lives become more focused as a result of it. What we use, such as the cup from Starbucks, the discarded Los Angeles Times, the checkbook where another check is torn out to pay another bill, becomes just as enormous as those bugs. - Rory L. Aronsky, filmthreat.com