“Chillingly Superb Survival Documentary”

Five minutes into March of the Penguins, I asked myself, “How can they make a full-length feature out of this?” I know I probably wasn’t alone in my sentiment—on the face of it, a documentary about Emperor penguins schlepping and sliding across the gelid Antarctic plains is neither high art, nor highly entertaining. And yet, at the hour and a half mark, when images of the foreign production unit interacting with friendly penguins serve as a backdrop for the rolling credits, I almost felt shortchanged because I had thoroughly enjoyed the film and wanted to see more.

Besides French director, Luc Jacquet, and his team of skilled cameramen, the single greatest contributor to this Warner Independent/National Geographic film is Morgan Freeman’s superlative narration. Freeman’s soothing baritone lends the movie an undeniably comforting degree of warmth that takes the edge off the visually chilling vistas and arctic landscapes (the first time the theater’s AC kicked in, I quickly threw on my jacket).

The movie wastes no time in depicting the plight of the penguins as they waddle seventy miles inland to an icy plain set aside as their mating grounds. The penguins pair off and mate; and after several months the females produce one egg each, which the fathers must keep warm under their downy coats until the mothers return from their feeding…seventy miles to the ocean and seventy miles back. Huddled together to stay warm, the male penguins keep their eggs warm until they hatch…the fathers must feed the chicks with the last meal they’ve stored up for just such an occasion. The males, now on the brink of starvation, anxiously await the return of the females. The females return just in the nick of time and then the fathers are off to feed. When the penguin families are finally reunited, they only have a short amount of time together before they must return to the coast and start the cycle all over again.

The intricacies and delicate balances in the survival of the penguins are astounding…if any part of the cycle is interrupted, the penguins become extinct. In some ways the “stars” of this film are more human than most movies featuring homo sapiens: the opening shots of penguins ambling along the frozen plain are strangely human in appearance and when one mother (whose chick died in the frigid air) tries to steal the chick of another mother, the group intervenes, displaying a degree of swift justice that our courts could only dream of.

March of the Penguins is the sleeper hit of the year and is definitely one documentary that won’t leave you out in the cold.

Rating; 3

Tags: Documentary