In a recent discussion of summer movies, Good Morning America
reviewer Joel Siegel called 2005 the Summer of the Penguins. He was
overstating the situation, of course, as only two of the summer’s
blockbusters have involved penguins at all. Nonetheless, they do seem to
be a popular draw. I haven’t seen Madagascar yet; I’ve heard
it’s rather stupid but that the penguins steal the show. I wonder if the
part they played in that film helped prepare audiences for March of the Penguins.
Perhaps they had penguins on the brain and were predisposed to enjoy a
movie featuring the awkward birds. Certainly the film’s success has been
something of a surprise. I first heard about it in a brief article
buried toward the back of a newspaper in May, but by the time it hit
theaters, this unassuming little film had gathered enough momentum to
blast away a number of records for documentaries. So what is it about
the movie that makes it so compelling?
I finally got to see
for myself the other day. Enthusiasm for the movie has apparently dimmed
a bit, as there couldn’t have been more than ten other people in our
theater, and half of them left after the toddler in their group began
making inordinate amounts of noise. The rest were senior citizens,
probably pleased to hit upon a film containing no objectionable content,
a rare find these days. A G rating is intriguing in and of itself given
the current state of movies; most Disney films don’t even carry that
stamp anymore. It’s not fast-paced, with the constant action and
frequent jokes common to kids’ films, but then this really isn’t a movie
for kids; and the inoffensive material is atypical for a film geared at
older audiences, but then this isn’t really a movie for adults. March of the Penguins is a movie for everyone.
The film follows the arduous journey the emperor penguins must make
every year in order to propagate the species. It opens with a wavering
panoramic shot of a large group walking slowly toward the horizon.
Though we all know the subject of the movie, when Morgan Freeman’s
narration begins, it is easy to forget that he is not talking about
people. When we get our first close-up of the intrepid journeymen to
which he refers, it almost comes as a surprise. Theirs is a story of
dedication and determination; it is, as Freeman tells us, “a story about
love.” We learn here that penguins recognize one another by sound. Our
ears are not so finely tuned, so we have no way of distinguishing one
bird from the next. It is a tale of individual tragedy or triumph, but
the communal experience of the march is our focus. We don’t have the
identifiers to root for a particular penguin over another, so we simply
root for them all, cheering when a fuzzy chick takes its first squinting
look at the frozen world around him, groaning along with the bereaved
parent when a chick succumbs to the cold, gasping when the hunter
becomes hunted as one of the mothers falls victim to the jaws of a sea
lion. (This brief segment of the movie is the most disturbing and
includes frightening close-ups of the predator’s teeth. It could scare
children just a bit; it startled me.) We marvel at the complex ritual of
marching 70 miles to the breeding grounds; laying the egg and
transferring it to the father, who must care for it until the mother
returns fully fed months later after the chick is born; taking the chick
from the father and resuming the journey back to the food source; and
finally leaving the chicks to fend for themselves for days at a time and
eventually for good. How can anything survive in such a hostile
environment? It is a tribute to tenacity.
There are moments of
levity even in this harsh landscape, though these are subtle and brief,
largely deriving from the juxtaposition of the narrator’s words to the
actions of the penguins. When the mother penguins return to the sea
where they are most at home, Freeman notes that they are very eager to
enter the water. “Some are a little too eager,” he says as two jump in
at once, resulting in both being stuck, as the opening in the ice is
really only large enough to accommodate one penguin. Most of the
humorous moments similarly involve penguins being klutzy: tripping over
one another, bumping into one another, sliding along on their bellies to
avoid having to waddle about on land. But this is a serious film, a
drama, a quest for survival. Dangers, chief among them freezing to death
and starvation, are omnipresent. Yet there is warmth. We see the
penguins snuggling together contentedly once they have found their mate
for the year and cuddling as a family once they are reunited months
later. Beyond the individual, we see the entire group huddling together
to protect one another from the fierce winds that surround them, and we
realize that the only reason these creatures are able to survive is that
they are willing to work together to an astonishing degree.
The cinematography is beautiful, and the dedication of the filmmakers in
capturing this footage is remarkable. I can imagine few less
comfortable working environments. This film, like last year’s Two Brothers,
is the effort of a French director with an obvious affection for the
environment. Director Luc Jacquet, who originally conceived the story,
draws the audience in so that we begin to think of these two-footed
travelers not as animals but simply as pilgrims who are in many ways as
human as us. Abject anthropomorphism? Perhaps, but it forces us to
consider that we may not be the only species capable of those virtues we
so admire in other people. The sense of connection would not be nearly
as strong without the narration, written by Jordan Roberts and provided –
in America, at least – by Freeman, who seems like the go-to guy for
film narration these days. So many of his roles are as a narrator or
some sort of leader, such is his presence. He has such a perfect voice
for such a task, paternal and gentle, infused with warmth and humor,
imparting information of educational value without ever being dry. The
marriage of his voice with the expertly written narration is flawless.
His is a voice of calm amidst all the strife the film’s subjects endure;
I find it an interesting juxtaposition that shortly after Hurricane
Katrina hit, he organized a charity auction to benefit the victims. It
seems roles such as this are a reflection of real life.
I was
struck by the readability of the credits upon the film’s conclusion.
Usually it’s a seemingly endless stream of names going by too quickly to
be read, but here each name was printed in large letters with a solid
gap before the next name. There was ample time to read the names as they
passed and watch the clips of the film crew interacting with their
subjects. Of course, the only person to have any presence on the screen
was Freeman; Jacquet wasn’t about to name each of the penguins and bill
them individually. The result? Credits that were as sparse as the
location on which the movie was filmed. In that case, the emptiness was
convenient. But Antarctica is anything but, and I can’t help but feel
grateful that North America is so much more hospitable. If we were
forced to switch territories with these flightless birds, who would fare
better? I certainly have no desire to test my endurance in such a
manner. More power to the penguins!
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