you were very proximal with your grandfather, yes?
Opening shot: close up on amber. Gradually, as the camera moves, we see that there's something in the amber. It's a cricket, or a grasshopper. This bit of amber, from a necklace Augustine wore (in the film version of the story) and presumably gave to Safran, was the first thing--or so it is implied--that Jonathan collected . He took it from the bedside table by his grandfather's deathbed. The thing about a bug in amber--and it's an ant in the book, not a cricket or grasshopper or whatever insect that is from the order Orthoptera--is that it is like time standing still, a remnant of the past. (And, if Hollywood (or Michael Crichton, anyway) can be believed, we can get dinosaurs out of them.) I assumed until I saw a couple people online calling is a cricket that the insect in amber in the movie was a grasshopper. Considering Grandfather's attention, a few times, to the moon, I appreciated the grasshopper's link to the wax and wane of the moon via Japanese tra...