Microcosmos - Il popolo dell'erba

Microcosmos is a magnificent journey, an experience to explore a world full of details and wonder. After watching this "documentary" you would never see another insect in the same way as before.

If you read some comments complaining about the little-to-non-existent narration is because they fail to understand this "documentary" is not about getting the facts straight. It is an experience and as such it is to be lived not to be told.

Sit on the grass, observe, and paint the daughter of the dragonfly.

I saw the Winged Migration before this one and I though that was the most beautiful and amazing films ever made. I never though I would be proved wrong soon. Microcosmos has everything Winged Migration has, such as amazing cinematography, beautiful music and the best studio ever, our planet, it also has something more - the whole new world to show that most people don't realise exists. "Look at your feet, this funny world." starts the beautiful song while the opening credits roll and we are treated to a beautiful flight through the clouds. The camera pans down, to the forest and then lower still. Thus starts the most amazing journey you ever saw on film and for the next hour you can't take your eyes of the screen.

Palm trees, anakondas, space aliens... Grass and insects actully, but shown in the way you never thought possible. Who would have known that the sight of two snails making tender love is so cute and lovely, that spiders are so scary, dung-beetles are so funny and waterdrops so heavy? Watch how grass grows, flowers open in the morning, insects eat plants, plants eat insects, insects make love to other insects, plants and vice versa, chrysalis change into butterfly, etc., etc. And did I mention tender snail lovemaking? :)

There is whole new world under our feet. Everything so small and so amazingly beautiful at the same time. Don't let it stay unnoticed. Go and watch this film immediately (and see Winged Migration as well).

"Microcosmos" is definitely one of the best animal documentary movies ever made! It's not about the most bizarre and exotic animals somewhere in Africa, but shows the all-day life of tiny insects like flies, spiders, bugs, ants, frogs, worms and snails in a French forest. There are nearly no comments, but well-chosen classical music adds a fascinating rhythm, dynamics and atmosphere to the stunning pictures... the French filmmakers just don't watch the tiny animals like scientists, but point out the beauty of their appearances, movements, actions and searches for food. Every single insect appears like painted from an artist and is shown in full close-up so that you can discover many new sides about the small animals somewhere in your own garden... and if you've watched a really romantic love scene by two snails know what "natural beauty" really means... highly recommended!

Amazing. There must have been millions of hours of footage shot to obtain these perfect sequences of magnified nature. Each segment was fascinating, beautiful, in some cases strangely emotional.

My jaw was literally dropped through much of this film. I even found myself wowing like a hippy and chuckling like Butthead many times. There were even some moments that I almost said, "No, that's not realistic. They made that up."

The soundtrack was almost non-existent, so you appreciated it more when the haunting music worked its way into a scene. The sound quality of the actual critters was very good as well. There is nearly no narrative or narration throughout the film -and that would be my only criticism -there should have been NONE. The movie was spectacular with no commentary, and the human voice for a brief moment in the beginning and end detracted from the alien environment.

This movie was not a documentary, it was just fine filmmaking that would only fall into the genre of "mind-f---".

It was undeniably beautiful. Take a meadow in France that appears to consist of nothing but grass, and show us what wonders there are to be seen if you lower your eyes and look at the very very small...

Insects (and arachnids and teensy molluscs) offer a possible advantage over, say, lions; in that with insects, cinematography really comes into its own. If you want to show a lion catching an antelope then you have to point your camera at a likely spot and wait and wait and wait until the event occurs; and when it does, chances are that the lighting is at its worst, the background is less than ideal and you would have got a better view from somewhere else. The world of the tiny gives the fellow with the camera much more control, much more room to manoeuvre. It's much easier to hit upon the perfect angle from which to show the spider eating the grasshopper. I don't know if this is true; but it's one possible explanation for why the shots are so gorgeous, and why we feel we were given the best possible seats.

But if you find yourself asking, "What the hell was going on?" - well, you shouldn't have to ask. You should have been told. One of the reasons (I hope) for watching what is after all a documentary, is to find out WHAT GOES ON in an ordinary meadow; and if the producer thought that a human voice would destroy the sibylline loveliness of it all, that's just too bad - film-making isn't all pretty pictures. If you don't want David Attenborough doing the talking (although frankly, I don't see why you wouldn't), then find someone else or some other style of narration; or, perhaps, take more care to arrange the images so that the images themselves tell the story. I'm sure it could have been done. As it was I got the impression that we were shown ants getting hit by raindrops until they thought we must be tired of ants - and then we were shown something else.

I don't want to carp too much. The makers could well retort that books, rather than films, are ideally suited to explanation, and that they had simply made a film for us to watch AFTER we had read the relevant books. Perhaps they have a point. At any rate, we may remain in the dark, but we have a wonderful view.