"Flight of the Butterflies" documentary

The only movie I remember seeing in 3D is My Bloody Valentine, and the audience screamed and covered our faces when the swaying sickle/ax or whatnot protruded from the big screen. That changed in June, when I saw Flight of the Butterflies.

The documentary is a little on the creepy side -- rather, the creepy-crawly side. In some scenes, a single monarch butterfly or its caterpillar overwhelms much of the screen...

... and it was in 3D.

and I watched in a small, intimate theater.

And I was the only audience member for that showing.

And there's at least one scene with amplified sound of a monarch larva feeding on its shell. 

It's kind of gross...

... but kind of cool, too.

That's because you the viewer are at scale with the world of this lovely creature. You're the milkweed upon which the monarch feeds or the blade of grass over which it flies. Apart from the effect of that scaling, the ground-level-to-skyward shots of some natural landscape and the monarch's flight path were two of my favorite features of the documentary.

The plot can't be ignored, as it depicts the lifelong dedication of wife-and-husband team Norah and Frederick Urquhart. Their work required decades of low-tech patience to determine the migratory route of monarchs. That's why my favorite part of the movie follows the defining response from another country to a traditional newspaper ad the Canadian duo placed.

I told my mother about the movie. She said she used to see monarchs when she was growing up. In addition, a fellow member of the Harrisburg NAACP Environmental Committee noted the abundance of these transcontinental pollinators along the riverfront (circa the '70s or '80s).

At some point this year, I saw a reaction to a Deborah Cox video in which the songstress holds a jar with a monarch inside. Despite the song's popularity, I can't say I've seen the video before then. (By the way, Cox was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this year.)

My inspiration for watching Flight of the Butterflies​ -- stemmed from the mysterious death of the manager of a UNESCO-recognized monarch sanctuary in Mexico. The drowned body of Homero Gomez Gonzalez, conservation activist and manager at El Rosario, was found in a nearby town. 

It turns out that the body of Raul Hernandez Romero, a tour guide at El Rosario, was found slain on site just days before.

Apparently, both men had either head wounds or head trauma. I've questioned the motive behind the murder of Gonzalez, whose death I learned of at the time. Now that I know he was one of two people slain, I question if his and Romero's murders are related: Both were affiliated with El Rosario. Both were slain in close duration of the other. And both succumbed to injuries to the head.  

In Harrisburg, tickets for Flight of the Butterflies are available from the Whitaker Center. It runs there until March 2023.

A review of Flight of the Butterflies (SK Films)

"Flight of the Butterflies" cover art (FlightOfTheButterflies.com)

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Jubalyn ExWilliams lives in Pennsylvania (United States). At the time of this writing, she serves as founding chair of the Harrisburg NAACP Environmental Committee. You can find dozens of her reviews, including one on the documentary Flight of the Butterflies at landturn.com/reviews.

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