Microcosmos

The history of cinema is lubricated with labours of love. Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou’s work on Microcosmos slides effortlessly into this category. Making a film about bug life in a French meadow over a period of 24 hours is not a question of scrambling about in the undergrowth, searching for creepies and then filming them. Nuridsany and Perennou explain that they spent three years on the project, wrote a screenplay, shot much of it in a specially made studio “in a wild part of the Averyron,” with equipment they had to adapt, or invent. They knew what insects they wanted and went out to find them. “I have to admit, there were doubles, like in any drama.” And that’s how they thought of Microcosmos, as a drama, not a documentary.

The Making Of featurette shows how it was done, although does not recreate sequences from the film. They did not train their cast, but simply built an environment in which its non-professional actors could perform naturally. Their most thrilling moment was when the underwater spider, who had sulked for a week, decided to construct its oxygen bubble in the pond-like tank provided and be photographed in close up doing so.

The film won five Cesars (French Oscars) – Best Sound, Best Music, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Producer – and those responsible in each category are interviewed in the second DVD feature. It would be patronising to call this fascinating, because what these men and women have achieved in their separate disciplines is nothing short of miraculous. It was decided after considerable thought not to use a commentary, although in the English version Kristen Scott Thomas is used briefly to set the scene. As sound designer Laurent Queglio says: “The sound track was so good it acted as a commentary.”

The composer Bruno Coulais started work three months before the sound was mixed. “We wanted the music to flow in and out of the sound,” he says. “By varying musical styles, we enriched the film.” Quaglio and his team had 22 weeks to create sounds for insects that otherwise are silent to the human ear. He sought “naturalism on the one hand and invention on the other.” At first, he thought the project crazy. In the end, he says: “We’re rarely proud of our work, but this time we are really proud.” The directors and cinematographers, Nuridsany and Perennou, are, according to producer Jacques Perrin, “scientists with a poetic knack.” Their film is a unique experiment. “What is three years of filming against 20 years of observing?”