Microcosmos

Microcosmos moves far beyond the standard nature documentary, choosing to absent human dialogue from the film, letting the creatures themselves do the talking, or at least the scratching and rubbing. The creatures chosen are nearly all insects and they are truly awesome when shown filling a cinema screen!

French filmmakers Claude Nuridsanny and Marie Perennou spent years developing the equipment to enable them to capture the lives of these insects on screen and then must have shown infinite patience taking the pictures, even if there must have been some "staging" of the star insects.

I mention this not because Microcosmos appears "staged", it certainly doesn't, but because of a celebrated and infamous incident that emanated years ago from the Walt Disney Studios.

Walt Disney Studios, apart from setting a standard which necessarily included a patronising human voice explaining the actions of the animals, also were responsible for one of the worst examples of subterfuge in the history of film.

Remember those lemmings, small rat like creatures, that according to the Walt Disney wildlife department, "in their millions periodically commit suicide by rushing over cliffs"?

Well that was entirely made up by the Disney filmmakers for the sake of making lemmings interesting. The lemmings were lemons.

Some of the action in Microcosmos must also have been set up. How could you get separate shots of two beetles approaching one another for example, even if there's no doubt that those beetles really did have that spectacular, full on blue; a fight that was well worth any such embellishment. Those beetles certainly weren't lemons.

But how can you make a feature length film, without dialogue, without a plot, about insects, not get boring? A combination of fascinating subjects, exceptional photography, tight editing and quick change of subjects does the trick, along with a series of pans away; the camera withdrawing; the vision of a hapless ladybird being pummelled by rain drops dissolving away and becoming the forest proper; allowing our eyes to view drizzle ladened full sized trees; thus re-establishing our larger perspective of the world.

Microcosmos is wonderful.

Microcosmos even slips into sleaze every now and then, most memorably when a couple of randy snails join. There's nothing moister than two slimy hermaphrodites hard at it.

Watching insects having sex brings our own, insignificant sexual obsessions into perspective; a lesson every lass and lad on the farm learns from an early age; a lesson many of us may at least have reinforced from watching a wonder like Microcosmos.

But wait until you see a mosquito emerging from water like a God from wetness; its wings slowly drying, its legs unfurling, and its charmed life beginning. You'll never again think of mosquitos in quite the same way.