true fairy tale

Vicky 2022-10-21 12:54:02

"Microscopic World" is the Chinese translation of the English title of the film, but I personally feel that translating it as "The Residents of the Grass" is closer to the perspective taken by the film. As a documentary, the film has almost no elements of the human world (except for music and two sentences), after all, humans are not a member of this microscopic world. The term microscopic is also inaccurate. The microscopic is relative to the macroscopic. The scale of the insect world has not yet reached the microscopic level. The gap between it and the scale in our daily life is only less than two orders of magnitude. Maybe it would be better to call it "Residents of Shrinking Realms".

Compared with the film director Jacques Behan's more famous work "Le Peuple migrateur" (Hong Kong translation "Birds and Dreams Flying"), "Microcosm" is also a rare vocal, which is also special The display of the world from the perspective of the director, as the "Earth" chapter in the director's Tiandiren trilogy, shows us a special kingdom in the world under our feet. There is no storyline, no subtitles, and no commentary, but the inhabitants of the country show us a different kind of life.

At the beginning, the film is not cut from the scale of insects, but from the clouds, accompanied by holy children's chorus, slowly advancing, and then quickly entering the grass... As usual in the beginning of the film, the names of the actors and directors are displayed one by one. Residents of the grass. Of course, this is an incomplete introduction. At this time, a rare voice-over appeared in the film: "This is a prairie somewhere on the earth
at dawn . Hidden under a prairie is a world as huge as a planet. The thick grass has turned into a forest. Small stones are like small mountains and water droplets. Oceans and seas time passes in different ways An hour passes like a day passes like a season passes a season passes a lifetime Want to explore the world










We must first keep silent and
listen to this miracle."

Accompanied by the background sound is a humid morning full of dewdrops, the insects seem to have nowhere to go, just crawling aimlessly... The camera time quietly speeds up, the daily life The evaporation of dew, which cannot be seen from the perspective, seems to ring the morning bell, announcing the advent of a tense day. The chrysalis morphs into butterflies, the flowers bloom one after another, the bees gather nectar for pollination, the insects show their disgusting tails, the ants collect food, the dung beetles Rolling dung balls, spiders preying on locusts, we watch magical scenes, but it's just another country's daily work.

Some people like to attach a "central idea" to this documentary, interpreting the world of grass dwellers from a human perspective. Of course there is nothing wrong with it. But for me, I prefer to see it as a simple dynamic portrait of the insect world. There are several scenes that impressed me.
In the first scene, a bunch of aphids are sucking the sap of a plant, and a The seven-star ladybug came happily and feasted on it. However, unfortunately, there were several tall and strong bodyguards - ants next to the aphids. The ladybug was discovered by the ants and was quickly driven away. Seeing that the natural enemy was driven away, The ants began to take credit for the aphids. They gently touched the body of the aphids with their feet, which prompted the aphids to secrete some fluid from the back of the buttocks and sucked up the fluid. I forgot to learn from textbooks or other books that ants would Aphids are raised and protected like livestock, in order to get the sweet-smelling liquid secreted by the aphids from the buttocks and drive away ladybugs. For humans, aphids are pests, so the ants who protect the aphids should also be pests. However, in nature, don't ants behave like us humans and feed livestock for their own survival? Why is it harmful?
Another scene is two snails mating (I guess mating, if not mating, Is it a deep love? →_→meow...). The bodies of two mollusks are intertwined, with a passionate opera as the background sound, like a couple who have reunited for a long time and are in love. However, with humans The difference is that after their mating this time, I am afraid that there will be no chance to meet in the future, and even if they meet, they may not know each other.
In the third scene, a hard-working honey bee is attracted by a beautiful female bee and climbs onto her hoping to kiss her. However, this "beautiful Mrs.bee" is just a flower of a plant. The appearance of the bee is used to lure the insect with its head. While he was hanging around on the flower, the flower stuck the anther on the head of the bee. , as the bee grows two beautiful golden tentacles. The bee realized that she had been deceived and was given a "yellow hat" that said "idiot", and flew away gloomily. It's not just animals that play tricks, the tricks of plants are also not to be underestimated. Especially for insects, flowers will not only trick you into pollinating them, spreading seeds for them, but even asking you to enter the urn, using you as flower fertilizer, and making you pay for your mistakes with your life.

Of course, we can also ignore these as much as possible, let our minds relax easily, feel the gorgeous colors and the beauty of nature in the documentary, and turn ourselves into an insect in the film, a member of the kingdom in the grass, and instantly Forget that you are still a member of this world.

View more about Microcosmos reviews

Extended Reading

Microcosmos quotes

  • Narrator (English version): [beginning narration] A meadow in early morning, somewhere on Earth. Hidden here is a world as vast as our own, where the weeds are like impenetrable jungles, the stones are mountains, and even the smallest pond becomes an ocean. Time passes differently here: an hour is like a day, a day is like a season, and the passing of a season is a lifetime. But to observe this world, we must fall silent now, and listen to its murmurs.

  • Narrator (English version): [ending narration] The night gives way once more. Nothing will stop what's now in motion, what hides in shadow, what searches forward, what flutters toward the light. Here, where time is measured out in moments, and new lives emerge from darkness, a day begins like any other. Beyond anything we can imagine, and yet almost beneath our notice.