"Microcosmos" (Documentary) (1996) - Movie Review

There is going to be no argument over the incredible cruising into the jungles of grasses and the residents of it to watch in agape while seeing “Microcosmos”. Directors of this documentary, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou embarks us to a journey happening in an unnoticed foreign space in Earth which is not in the interiors of Amazon or the deepest dense forests of Africa but a simple meadow. It has some of the millions of myriad creatures living along with us under those green territories. You wonder the possibility of us being watched like this by a more powerful creatures or aliens or whatever it is. The time is twenty minutes into the film and you begin to get restless. And it grows and summits in the end with boredom.

With the few lines of narration from Kristin Scott Thomas about these hidden creatures, the film takes us into various insects we encounter in our daily life and some we have no clue of its existence. It is colourful, gooey, textured, moves like a robot and words can be hunted to explain those beings amongst us. There is some opera and orchestration which does its synchronizing ability to these tiny living things. The fights, the copulation and their collection of raw materials for their survival are shown with care for the nature and the factor of us living oblivious to those is interesting.

With a short span of eighty minutes, “Microcosmos” is calculated correctly for its running time but unfortunately they also miscalculate the stretch of the happenings in it. It has some of the most bizarre and eerie moments in surprise, amazement and creepiness altogether in three to four instances. The rest are all fillers or to me at least it appeared merely uninteresting. Because the awe factor passes over and the thinking has been done. Another reason is that the Discovery Channel and National Geographic have reached those with in depth details and analysis. Here it is silence and some music with nothing at all. It is then an exercise of silent actions of the insects doing their chores obviously with better hard work.

It is amazing that the techniques they use to catch their prey are so sophisticated with abilities beyond our imagination and at the same time how their minds are ceased to act on things which appear simple to the human are of mere impossibility for them to grasp. They can be associated and compared to computers. Computers of course are a non-living thing and it needs electrical energy unlike these beings. It makes me say so because of the superiority in certain things and a blind following towards other things of so much relative measure of ease. Irony of life.

All the thoughts and praise goes for the key scenes scattered which would collectively be a thirty minutes short film. The rest drags, slows down and brings the film to slowness screeching further into more lethargic movements but not stopping at any moment. It appears as an infinite circle of movements with chirps, ticks and creeks. And begin to feel differently of this nature’s beauty suffocating with boredom. It is too much, way too much to take the miniscule steps of these things going haywire.

There are two things which interested me while seeing the film. First obviously the life of these tiny monsters, a complete scary and a surreal look only that it is real under the grounds and in between the grasses. The second thing is the technology to capture these regions of impossible access in a fashion to doubt the existence of such advancement in the media field. I appreciate both of these but it becomes too much of this world.