Four stars. Rating: G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.13.13
Nature is always awesome, but
sometimes she’s jaw-droppingly unbelievable.
Then, if we’re lucky — if the
right wildlife saga intrigues the right filmmakers — the results can be
mesmerizing.
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| Monarch butterflies lay eggs, emerge as caterpillars, grow until they "hibernate" in a chrysalis and then emerge as adult butterflies to begin the cycle anew. You probably thought this entire process occurs within a relatively small geographical radius, such as within our city limits, right? Way, way wrong ... as this film demonstrates. |
Luc Jacquet’s March of the
Penguins wasn’t merely a marvelous film and the surprise hit of the 2005 movie
season; it also was a Hollywood game-changer, proving that well-made
documentaries could hold their own against big-budget dramas. Walt Disney had
demonstrated as much between 1948 and ’60, with his studio’s True-Life
Adventures series, but — several generations later — the non-fiction genre had
fallen out of mainstream favor, until Jacquet’s mind-bogglingly patient Emperor
penguins came waddling along.
Out of favor, perhaps, but
definitely not extinct.
IMAX theaters have been screening
documentary shorts since 1971’s Tiger Child, slowly assembling an impressive
library of titles that included hits such as 1984’s Grand Canyon: The Hidden
Secrets, 1990’s Blue Planet and 1995’s The Living Sea. IMAX projects have
grown even more impressive as filming techniques have improved, and the
giant-screen format definitely came into its own with 1998’s one-two punch of Everest and T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous.
Suddenly, IMAX movies were cool.
All of which brings us to Flight
of the Butterflies, just now fluttering into Sacramento’s Esquire IMAX
theater. And while these delicate winged insects admittedly aren’t as cute as
tuxedo-clad penguins, they’re quite remarkable in their own right, as director
Mike Slee’s 40-minute film makes abundantly clear.
At its core, Flight of the
Butterflies is a lepidopterist’s mystery story, which Slee and co-scripter
Wendy MacKeigan weave into a compelling depiction of the monarch butterfly’s
unusual life cycle and amazing migratory habits.
Charles Foster Kane had his
Rosebud; Fred Urquhart’s world changed as a result of PS 397.
And therein lies a tale...
The story begins in Toronto in
the early 1920s, when as a boy Urquhart wondered where all the butterflies went
each winter. This interest blossomed into an academic career as a zoology
professor who maintained his fascination with butterflies; he and his wife,
Norah, became obsessed with the concept of somehow tracking these winged
insects.
But tracking meant tagging, a
seemingly insurmountable issue: How could one tag something as delicate as a
butterfly’s moisture-sensitive wing, without impairing its flight abilities?
Very carefully, as it turned out,
and by 1940 Urquhart was successful; he began tagging monarchs with tiny labels
that read “Send to Zoology University of Toronto Canada.”
What happened next, as depicted
in Slee’s charming film, never would have been believed as fiction. Thanks to
press releases and ads that Norah Urquhart placed in newspapers throughout
North America, their embryonic Insect Migration Association enlisted thousands
of volunteers across the United States and Canada to tag hundreds of thousands
of butterflies, and then attempt to find them again, in order to track their
migratory route.
As demonstrated by this film’s
gallery of vintage newspaper photos and articles, joining the “butterfly brigade”
became a cool thing to do in the free-spirited, counter-culture 1960s and early
’70s: a means of honoring good ol’ Mother Earth — remember, the first Earth Day
was celebrated in 1970 — while (hopefully) contributing to scientific research.
In August 1975, Minnesota junior
high school students Jim Street and Dean Boen, assisted by their teacher Jim
Gilbert, fastened tag number PS 397 to a butterfly, and then watched it fly
away.
Meanwhile, fellow “citizen
scientists” Ken Brugger and his wife, Catalina Aguado, were searching for
monarchs in and around the Michoacan region of Mexico. Brugger, a textile
engineer and businessman from Texas, had become one of Urquhart’s soldiers
entirely by accident; while driving on a road through the Transvolcanic mountain
belt one day, halfway between Morelia and Mexico City, he had been amazed to
discover that a pounding rainstorm was covering the road — and his vehicle —
with thousands upon thousands of dead butterflies.
Brugger had kept one of
Urquhart’s newspaper ads for years; he got in touch, and soon he and Aguado
spent every free moment looking for monarchs. Her similar interest was
serendipitous — she remembered being enchanted by monarchs as a little girl —
because Brugger, being color-blind, could not distinguish different insects by
appearance (an intriguing detail not mentioned in this film, although it
certainly should have been).
They searched, and they searched,
and they searched. And then, on Jan. 2, 1975...
Well, heck; I have to leave you
wanting to see this film to find out, right?
But I’ll add this much: Aguado
made a memorable appearance on the cover of the August 1976 issue of National
Geographic, a picture that remains famous — and breathtaking — to this day.
Fred and Norah Urquhart, Brugger
and Aguado are played by actors in these re-created scenes, of course, but Slee
handles his cast with a gentle touch, eschewing the phony-baloney bombast and
overacting that infect so many television dramatizations. Nor do the factual
details need to be enhanced; the saga is sufficiently fascinating in its own
right.
Urquhart’s story is interwoven with
cinematographer Simon De Glanville’s airborne and ground-level depictions of
the monarch life-cycle, from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. The
macro-photography is stunning throughout, although our glimpse inside a
chrysalis is particularly breathtaking, thanks to advanced MRI and micro-CT
scans. (Peter Parks, credited for macro photography and system design, has won
two technical achievement Academy Awards for microscopic and special-effects
photography.)
The most astonishing detail,
however, concerns the monarch’s unusual generational phases. We’re certainly
not surprised to learn that two or three generations of butterflies are
required to make the initial trip north, while traveling from Mexico through
the United States and up into eastern Canada. But then comes the corker: Once
in Canada, the egg-laying adults somehow know to create a “super generation”
that, when it emerges and grows through caterpillar infancy and becomes a butterfly,
is larger, stronger and lives eight to 10 times longer than the “regular”
generations.
These “super butterflies” then
travel the entire distance from Toronto to Mexico, a journey of roughly 2,500
miles, in order to begin the cycle anew.
That has to blow your mind.
Slee and MacKeigan don’t miss the
opportunity for a bit of environmental advocacy, of course; no nature
documentary could exist without it. The message is delivered gently, but is no
less grim; monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, which then becomes the sole
diet of the rapidly growing caterpillar. Although once prevalent in fields
across the continent, back in the day, industrial farming has wiped out massive
stretches of milkweed.
As shown here, this potentially
dire situation is being addressed by homeowners who plant “butterfly-friendly”
gardens, laden with both colorful flowers — to attract the monarchs — and
milkweed, in order to nurture them.
My one complaint with this film
is completely regional: It does not cite the massive monarch butterfly preserve
that we have here in California, at the Monterey Peninsula’s Pacific Grove,
where millions of monarchs winter from mid-October through mid-February.
California isn’t even acknowledged in this film’s depictions of the monarch
migratory route, although a map included with the press notes shows a smaller
route that apparently runs from the California coast to Nevada, Arizona and
southern Utah, and then back again.
Not nearly as dramatic as the
trip from Toronto to Mexico, to be sure, but I’d have thought we warranted at
least a mention.
No matter. Flight of the
Butterflies is enchanting, absorbing and instructive: everything one could
want from a nature documentary.
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