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Review: Nocturnes

— by BEV QUESTAD —

Turn off the lights and settle in for stereo sound and a cinematic rush.

Who would have thought that a movie on a scientist’s project studying hawk moths would be such a symphony for the senses?

You are led up into the eastern side of the densely forested mountains of India that abut the Himalayas. The varied bird songs, trees, bushes, vines and mist produce a lush vibrant environment of variegated deep green. You walk with Mansi Mungee, the ecologist, her driver and local men hired as photographers who are happy to have the work. It’s a little damp.

They sleep in very nice tents on what looks like a narrow one-lane road. There don’t seem to be any open meadow spaces because the forest is so densely packed. It is only when you hear a great bellow that you are aware of the elephants. One fellow asks what they should do if the elephants come upon them. Climb a tree? Another responds that elephants ate his friend’s clothes – trousers and shirt.

Each night they carefully take out Mungee’s moth screen. It hangs from a clever device with a dome light supported by poles. It is white, but sewn into the fabric is a blue grid. The goal is to attract moths to the fabric in order to photograph them.

As night falls and the loud bird songs recede, the clicking, rapid beating sounds begin. Moths flock to the white screen. I am a little worried because I don’t know what other nocturnal animals may also flock to the project.

Mungee and her assistants work to get just the right photos. It isn’t easy because there can’t be any shadows and each moth must be on the screen in the right position. They are documenting the size of the hawk moth at a series of different elevations.

Soon, I am flicking moths away from my hair. Yes, the experience is that realistic!

Four hundred perfect photos are required at each elevation. Mungee says it might take four to five months or even two years to get enough photos.

The big question is why so much painstaking effort? The answer has to do with climate change and survival.

While some hawk moths live just two to three days, this kind of moth has been on earth 300 million years, which is before dinosaurs and flowering plants. Mungee explains that moths are the crucial link that hold the whole forest together. She says, “Despite 5 mass extinction events, there are over 150,000 species of moths on the planet. What an instinct for survival they must have.”

As the earth warms, what will happen as the moths keep rising to higher elevation levels to accommodate the heat? As they rise their predators, the birds, will have to also rise and in quick time, the birds’ predators will have to rise as well, and so on.

The movie is arrestingly beautiful, but the foreboding problem is dire.

Rating: 10/10



CREDITS

Directors: Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan
Produced by Anirban Dutta
Executive Producers: Greg Boustead and Jessica Harrop,
Featuring: Mansi Mungee, Gendan “Bicki” Marphew, Ramana Athreya
Director of Photography: Satya Rai Nagpaul, ISC
Editor: Yael Bitton with Co-Editor: Anupama Srinivasan
Composer: Nainita Desai
Location Sound Recordist: Sukanta Majumdar
Sound Design: Tom Paul and Shreyank Nanjappa
Time: 83 minutes
Official Website: https://www.sandboxfilms.org/films/nocturnes/

FESTIVAL AWARDS
2024 World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft at the Sundance Film Festival
2024 Best Film at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival
2024 Best International Documentary at Docville

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