Microcosmos: Special Edition

Blu Ray

Region B

A beautiful French meadow on a summer's day is the setting for this incredible, award winning film that takes its microscopic cameras into the heart of the kingdom of the insects. While so many nature documentaries look at what are considered grand animals and focus on the beauty and majesty of dolphins, lions or bears, it is amazing what can be uncovered by getting “down in the dirt” and looking at what is hidden beneath our feet.

There is a microcosmos, a miniature universe where simple things such as a raindrop can cause a flood and a spider can live within an air bubble. We see snails making love, a colony of ants under attack and a beetle pushing a ball of dung up a hill. It is filled with sex, gore and action but it not a Hollywood CGI blockbuster but a reflective French nature doco. It doesn’t star big names but stars ants, bees, ladybugs, butterflies, beetles and snails.

To capture such a world is not easy and takes time, special photographic equipment and lots of patience, indeed the film involved fifteen years of research, two years of equipment design and three years of shooting. Microcosmos won five Cesars, the respected French equivalent of an Oscar.

While it may have been made some fifteen years ago, the new Blu Ray edition is nothing short of breathtaking. Presented in 1080/24p it is visually arresting and offers an excellent range of sound formats including PCM2.0, DD5.1 & DTS 5.1. The DTS 5.1 is so clear it is like being enveloped in nature’s sound. This is very significant since the film is not narrative driven but allows the beauty of nature itself to carry the program, which it does admirably !

Features include The World of Microcosmos, The Making of Microcosmos and The Story of 5 Cesars.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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