MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (2005)

Even without constantly worrying about immediate survival or providing a stable, healthy environment for yourself and your loved ones, happiness is far from guaranteed. Many people internally carry self-defeating, cruel narratives about themselves throughout their entire lives, or have regrets that continue to plague them years after they first cropped up. Social media presents highly unenviable new challenges for young people, while the internet in general, its positives put aside for a moment, offers a depressing alternative to the risks and joys of real life, as well as creating a canvas for people to exhibit widespread callousness towards others with virtually no consequences.

These examples barely scratch the surface of the issues that plague humanity, even for those who have many of their basic needs covered. But while these matters aren’t suddenly made insignificant when one considers documentaries like March of the Penguins / La Marche de l’empereur, which sensitively yet openly convey the brutality of nature, such works are eye-opening enough to put one’s problems into perspective compared to the less fortunate species that we cohabit this planet with. Not that the vast majority of us would ever get the opportunity to witness this particular group in their natural habitat, making this documentary’s intimate approach to the penguins it follows throughout their mating and breeding season all the more impactful.

Since the penguins aren’t very expressive, watching them as a group is often lightly comedic, where they all stand around awkwardly and offer little comfort or responsiveness to each other. They look like a giant group of introverted people standing by a water cooler in an office, waiting for someone more extroverted to drop by so a conversation will be initiated. But mostly March of the Penguins is harrowing, a quest that asks how members of this species can endure the brutal weather conditions around them. Even when they have been bred over millennia to adapt to these environments, they still have to nearly kill themselves just to create offspring and raise them during their first few months in this unforgiving world.

Narrated by Morgan Freeman in the English-language version, Jacquet’s film doesn’t bother ruminating on these penguins’ psychology, just as the director isn’t looking to discover if such depth of feeling exists in this area. Instead, Freeman’s voiceover narration wisely focuses on the processes by which these penguins survive their breeding season, where treacherous winds mean they must risk death at every turn, while they continually starve themselves to ensure their babies get a chance at life. It’s harrowing stuff and would make even someone in a sorrowful state of mind reflect on how their existence isn’t so burdensome.

There are questions abound surrounding this film that can never be answered, like whether there’s any purpose to such a tortured existence, where the females lose a third of their body weight throughout their pregnancy, while the males starve themselves for over 100 days. Even when the eggs are hatched, the males must keep them firmly tucked beneath them for two months, where if the egg slips out from its resting place for a few seconds the brutal cold will almost certainly terminate the unborn child.

It’s horrifying to watch such a moment occur, especially given that these penguins are so inexpressive that you have to imagine they’re flooded with the biological imperative to give their children the best shot at survival. To watch that opportunity shrivel away to nothingness feels cruel beyond reason. But March of the Penguins is also rather hopeful, showcasing the ingenious survival tactics of these beings, whether that’s in children gorging on the protein-rich substance secreted from their fathers’ throat sac for sustenance, or the fact that before birth these males survive by consuming snow around them as they stand huddled over their eggs.

Early scenes depicting the males and females approaching one another for breeding are downright jolly compared to everything that comes afterwards, where they puff out their chests and try to give themselves something of an edge (a hilarious action given that their appearance and behaviour are near-identical from one another). But the truly beautiful scenes here are found in the rare moments of connection, oases of calm amidst winds that pirouette snow through the air and brutal chills that could cause the death of a chick in moments. Two penguins continually dip their heads towards one another in one poignant interaction, their graceful arcs forming a dance that we will never fully understand, but if anything that just makes this moment all the more tender.

This is a film whose subject matter dwarfs its presentation, where even shoddy production value would only somewhat undercut the power of depicting the sacrifices this species undergoes. Thankfully, Freeman’s rich tones, commanding yet warm, draw viewers closer to this world, while the close-up shots of these penguins and their predicaments lend an intimate quality to March of the Penguins. It’s because these beings are so easy to sympathise with that this film feels like a metaphor for overcoming hardship, made all the more poignant by how suffering occurs at random. There’s no good reason why some of these beings must die while others make it out of these arduous circumstances, but the same can be said of any species, including our own.

The connections between the penguins’ survival tactics and the ways that humans try to overcome hardship were perhaps what prompted Jacquet to employ a very different route with the film’s original narration. The original French-language version of the film contains first-person narration from the perspective of a family unit of penguins, with the mother, father and child all relating these unique experiences that their species undergoes. This version was even dubbed into Hungarian and German, though it;s dwarfed in popularity by the English-language version, to such an extent that I couldn’t find a copy of the original film to compare the two.

While March of the Penguins may make for an even greater experience with this in mind, it’s difficult to imagine this creative choice not coming across as a tired gimmick at best, and a thoroughly misguided attempt to make this species seem more human at worst. As it is, Freeman’s narration invites us to care about these creatures, while reminding us that we can only gain so much insight into their suffering. While this documentary swells with empathy for the penguins, it also recognises that there is a great distance between its audience and the unfathomably unforgiving and cruel environment they’re witnessing.

Alex Wurman’s score hits some repetitive notes, but on the whole, he recognises not just the beauty of these moments, but the fact that their sum total is a moving journey of epic proportions. It’s very easy to use the film’s arduous quest to parallel it with our species’ instincts and behaviours—with contemporaneous conservative commentators using March of the Penguins’ mention of monogamy, and its emphasis on family, as an emboldening of conservative values — but such comparisons fail on two fronts. For starters, they miss out on our unique adaptations to our environments that are worth considering in terms of how we have diverged from this entirely distinct species. But such a perspective also takes away from the horror and majesty embedded in the life of an emperor penguin, which is conveyed with great sensitivity in this riveting documentary, rightfully earning it the Academy Award for ‘Best Documentary Feature’ and ensuring that future generations can also marvel at it.

FRANCE • USA | 2005 | 86 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | FRENCH • ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Luc Jacquet.
writer: Luc Jacquet & Jordan Roberts (English version).
narrators: Charles Berlin, Romane Bohringer & Jule Sitruk • Morgan Freeman (English version).