‘Nocturnes’ Review: A Delicate Doc Explores the Beauty of Moths and What They Tell Us About Climate Change

In Nocturnes, a new documentary by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, moths prove themselves to be this planet's most poetic creatures. Their beauty comes mostly from their routines, but they also possess aesthetic charm. They boast striking colors and patterned wings that rival their more popular cousins. They follow the moon, guided by both its phases and its light. At night, the silver glow illuminates their paths as they flit from flower to flower in search of nectar.

The delicate film (which won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft upon its Sundance premiere) takes viewers deep into the forests of the Eastern Himalayas, a lush environment in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh that pulses with a vibrant ecological life. Singing birds, elephants calling and the growl of apex predators become a soundtrack for the researchers toiling away at their project.

There, quantitative ecologist Manis leads an ambitious mission to catalog every type of Himalayan moth. These insects, she tells her co-conspirator Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community, can help people better understand the impact of climate change. Moths are not only incredibly diverse (there's said to be some 160,000 species in the world, compared to 17,500 for butterflies), but they have also survived every age of the planet. Their endurance is at once a paean to their spirits and a well of prescient lessons.

Before information can be gleaned, however, data must be collected. Nocturnes is as much a process film as it is a sensory experience. The doc opens with Manis and Bicki setting up light screens that attract hundreds of moths each night, working quickly and quietly. They envelop themselves within the forest's evening soundscape, and the noise of their boots shuffling across the grass melds with the whining crickets, howling owls and rustle of animals sheltering in the bushes.

When the moths start to overwhelm the sheet, on which Manis has drawn mini grids, the researchers begin photographing them with a digital camera. Cinematographer Satya Nagpaul uses close-up shots to create gorgeously composed scenes that find the beauty in these misunderstood creatures. A death's-head hawkmoth bears a pattern resembling a skull. Others spread their wings to reveal circles that look like eyes. Some are a radiant yellow, others a muted gray. These moments are some of the best in Nocturnes because in their detail, Dutta and Srinivasan relay an intimate understanding of this habitat.

Early in Nocturnes, Manis explains that they must take each image precisely because later, they will use them to accurately measure the lengths, width and wingspan of each insect. There is no estimated timeline for this work. Driven by an admirable determination, she and her team plan to reveal the migratory patterns of these beguiling creatures by comparing their sizes, shapes and populations at various elevations. Are the Himalayan moths, partial to cooler weather, ascending up the mountains as temperatures below steadily rise? What are the implications of this movement, since moths support the local ecosystem?

These are just a few of the questions they pose with their experiments. Dutta and Srinivasan don't set out to furnish answers in their 83-minute feature, which might frustrate those looking for definitive conclusions. There are informative moments in which Manis explains the animals' habits, talks through her research with colleagues and presents early findings of her study, but they have a strained quality that feels discordant with the relaxed posture of the rest of the film.

Although Nocturnes is concerned with the slow rhythm and sustained dedication required for Mani and Bicki's labor, its strength primarily comes from how it captures the texture of the forest. Shreyank Nanjappa's sound design is positively overwhelming as it amplifies the cacophonous music of nature. Glimpses of moths landing on the light sheets are just as arresting as establishing shots of the environment. Unforgettable images include fog creeping across the screen, enveloping the trees, and sightings of other beasts, like elephants.

It's in transporting viewers into the heart of this jungle, where the moths calibrate the ecosystem, that Nocturnes most its most compelling case for protecting these exquisite creatures and our planet.

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