This fell under the week of "Animal Experience" in my Film class. Basically watching films from a perspective other than human. We were assigned this and Bambi, which I have already reviewed for this site.This is more of a documentary style which purports via Kristin Scott Thomas voiceover to be a day in the life of the insects all around us. Except we know this must have taken weeks, if not months, to film using very specialized cameras and manipulated environments. So, not cinéma vérité. But still informative. The camera takes viewers down to ground level and follows bugs from land to water to air pretty comprehensively. Scale is what is truly important and impressive here. A pheasant is about the size of an American football without the feathers, but to an ant it is larger and more destructive than Godzilla. It's also interesting to see some of the social and hunting behaviors of insects. There are ants farming aphids like little green dairy cows and a spider creating an air bubble hunting lair to snag insects underwater.
Personally, I think we could have gotten the same effect from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and it would have fit the "sci-fi" theme of the class better. This is just a garden-variety nature documentary that has most likely already been eclipsed by newer, more advanced nature documentaries. Probably by the BBC. Those people really know how to film nature.
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