Microcosmos and Other Anthropomorphic Levels

Microcosmos moves beyond primitive anthropomorphism by including scenarios that draw on folk-psychology levels of anthropomorphism. Like humans, these insects must contend with a variety of external conflicts, for example, showing they have desires and strategically determine how best to fulfill them. In one scene, a beetle rolls a huge mound of dirt (a boulder from a human perspective), pushing it up a hill seemingly in time with the instrumental march in the background. In close up, the beetle looks like a soldier wearing protective armor. When this “boulder” gets stuck on a twig, the music heightens, building tension, but the perseverant beetle strategically frees the boulder from the obstacle and rolls on. When the camera zooms out, it shows the beetle on a gravel road, emphasizing the difficult obstacle it has overcome and its relation with humanity’s approach to challenging situations.

Other scenes combine primitive psychology and emotional anthropomorphism. In one scene, for example, a quail pecks up ants, killing and eating them one by one, the stamp of its beak louder than the woodwinds accompanying it, and the crack of ant exoskeleton turns this documentary into a moment of horror. The quail is meeting its basic needs, but the ants flee in what looks like fear, a fear heightened by the music and horrific cracks in the soundtrack. The horror continues in a pond scene where water bugs catch and sting flies, and amphibians feed on water bugs. Here again, the predators feed their hunger, and their victims attempt to flee in fear. 

The mood is lightened with images of water bugs seemingly dancing with their reflections in the water and spiders laying eggs in underwater nests filled with their own air bubbles, providing an emotional uplift to viewers, if not to the insects in each scene. When two snails are shown copulating, “engaging in a long and very loving wet kiss,” according to Ebert (1997), however, emotional levels of anthropomorphism are at the fore.

Folk-psychology levels of anthropomorphism are almost as prevalent as primitive psychology levels in the film, however. When insects battle the elements, for example, they are shown strategizing ways to avert rushing waters caused by a rainfall. For them, a steady rain erupts quickly into a flood. Water droplets larger than the insects they hit turn a summer storm into an eco-disaster. Orchestral strings reach a crescendo as water pounds both earth and insects.  To highlight their vulnerability, the film contrasts a sturdy single tree with a grasshopper that nearly loses its grip on a wavering grass shoot. 

After the storm, a snail drinks from a water hole left by the rain. Ants drink and find safety on grass leaves. Other insects feed, as well, but one is marooned on a rock in the middle of flooding waters. The music grows louder and more ominous as a flying insect cleans itself and a worm emerges from a hole, its skin transparent. Although the scene recalls a similar storm in Disney’s Bambi (James Algar and Samuel Armstrong, 1942), the clash of cymbals turns the scene to a damaged anthill where worker ants rebuild the structure, demonstrating in multiple ways the connections between human and insect approaches to difficulties.