Directed by Luc Jacquet
Written by Luc Jacquet and Michel Fissler
Story by Luc Jacquet
Narration Written by Jordan Roberts
As Told by Morgan Freeman
Produced by Yves Darondeau, Christopher Lioud and Emmanuel Pirou
Music by Alex Wurman (U.S. Version)
Cinematography by Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Maison
Edited by Sabine Emiliani

Life. The greatest force on the planet. Mysterious, evolving, defying. Even in the harshest conditions our great planet has to offer, Life stubbornly cuts a path. March of the Penguins pays homage to one of the greatest success-in-the-face-of-adversity stories in the annals of biology: how a flightless bird learned to thrive in the middle of the coldest, driest, most unlivable place imaginable. The emperor penguin’s nine-month mating and birth cycle unfolds on the big screen as the strangely human-acting birds face starvation, freezing, exhaustion, seventy-mile treks, bitter snowstorms, and vicious predation. According to narrator Morgan Freeman, they do it all for love.

I cannot say for certain, and many biologists would agree with me, that the penguins’ mating cycle arises from ‘love,’ a loaded word even when talking just about humans. However, after spending a feature-length film with these amazing avians, my eyes brought within inches of their beautiful black, white, and yellow plumage as I watched them raise and care for a chick through instinctual cooperation, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps ‘love’ is the right word. I shed a few tears for the beauty of the mating, and the loss of an egg or a chick. I haven’t shed a single tear over any movie starring humans so far this year…so perhaps the penguins do it all for love. At the very least, love of life.

A French co-production with National Geographic Films, March of the Penguins has garnered huge amounts of critical praise, and it deserves every bit of it. This is no Discovery Channel or Animal Planet documentary inflated into a feature film and tossed on the screen. This is an epic, and has the feeling of a great drama. Freeman’s narration of the gentle, literate script helps give the film this personality, but mostly the skill of the French filmmakers skill to capture the immensity of the Antarctic landscape (did you know how beautiful this continent is?) and the almost-human landscape of the penguins gives the project its epic scale. It compares in many ways to the classic early documentaries of the 1920s, when the nonfiction film evolved into a form of grand cinema that packed in theaters like Radio City Music Hall. In particular, March of the Penguins resembles Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s Grass: A Nation’s Fight for Life, a 1925 film about an Iranian people making an incredible cross-country trek to find grazing lands for their flocks. The emperor penguins of March of the Penguins must also trek long miles through harsh conditions in their species’ fight for life.

The nine-month cycle begins with the birds’ emergence from the sea and seventy-mile walk across the ice of Antarctica to reach their mating grounds. These first shots grab the audience members with the birds’ astonishingly anthropomorphic behavior: when they walk in a line, from a distance they hilariously resemble a pack of short guys wearing rain ponchos, or perhaps poor-fitting tuxedos. Throughout the movie, the penguins’ antics waver between sympathy and hilarity; this strange bird is beautiful but often humorously awkward. Watching two females plunge into the same waterhole at once and get their rears stuck up in the air is a gut-busting sight.

Mostly however, the penguins amaze. The torments they encounter, such as the male going without food for a hundred days as they sit on their egg to keep it warm while their mates replenish their strength in the ocean, are astounding. Watching the females fly through the water like torpedoes, or a couple carefully rehearse the passing of the egg from one to the other so it won’t freeze, make for jaw-dropping sights. And watch out for the jaws of that leopard seal! Clever editing and camera work making the leopard seal attack a shocking sequence.

And when the chicks finally arrive, it’s time for the aaaaaaahs! In terms of cuteness, baby penguins with their thick gray down could beat anything Disney animation has ever created. The death of a few of the chicks won’t leave a dry eye in the house. One female’s shocking reaction to her chick’s death will leave audiences gasping. The narrator calls the act “unthinkable,” but it actually isn’t…humans commit similar acts of selfish cruelty every day.

Although rated ‘G’, March of the Penguins won’t go over well with extremely young children; the narration and the biological events won’t make much sense to them, and the film spends a lot of time merely rejoicing in the spectacle of the birds as they interact or move purposely from place to place. Young children will get fidgety over this, but anyone over the age of six will fall in love with this movie. Rarely has natured had a chance to appear on the big screens in such an astonishing way. Turn off the nature programs on TV and get to the local theater and soak up one of Life’s great masterpieces.

The penguins will be back in Batman Returns!

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