MICROCOSMOS
A film review by Vince Waldron
Copyright 1997 Vince Waldron
An odd import that's currently making the rounds of the country's art house circuit, this lushly photographed documentary gives us a fairly novel close-up at a bunch of insects as they mate, eat, fight and generally cavort for a series of extremely patient documentary film makers in France. Though not without its charms, it's now here near the cinematic revelation promised by the well meaning reviews that were hyped in the press when the film made a recent stop in LA on its current rounds of the art house circuit. Though the local reviewers seemed to find this a thrilling and unique slice of cinematic magic, I was less impressed by the film's admittedly state of the art cinematagraphy, finding nothing more than a modern variant on those disney true life nature films that were so popular in third grade science class in the sixties. Nicely shot, yeah--but its still just bugs.
By coincidence I happened to catch a revival of another movie that adopts the point of view of our six-legged friends: the 1941 animated feature "Mr Bug Goes to Town" (which was screened as the final entry in the LA County Museum's tribute to the animated films of the Fleischer brothers.) Those looking for the classic bug's eye view movie might do themselves a favor and track down the republic studios videocassette of this one.
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Please reply directly to me at:
ag644@lafn.org
Vince Waldron
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