If there’s one film category I haven’t seen much of, it’s the documentary. Even popular ones, until relatively recently, were not much on my radar. That even included the huge hit documentary March of the Penguins, a movie that was big enough in 2005 to completely punctuate the pop culture consciousness even for people who don’t normally go to nature documentaries. But me, I didn’t bother, probably because I didn’t really go to the movies all that often in 2005.
But, as always, when I have some free time, HBO Max has been great for filling in a lot of my blank spots.
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this beautifully-shot documentary follows some emperor penguins as they come to shore in Antarctica, They pair off, lay some eggs, the males tend them for a while, the females take over when the eggs that survive hatch, and eventually the chicks grow up as the families make their way out to sea. There really isn’t much of a plot to the movie aside from the life cycle of a penguin as the babies are born and raised enough for them to survive the cold ocean waters, starting the whole cycle over again.
As such, this will probably be a short review.
I have already mentioned the beautiful photography. Antarctica isn’t a very hospitable place, and the movie doesn’t shy away from that, showing harsh weather, predators killing penguins, and even dead birds. At the same time, there’s an alien nature to the penguins. They don’t look much like the sorts of animals most people see on a routine basis, and most people don’t go anywhere near the South Pole, and the way penguin “society” is set up, it does look a lot like a societal structure of some kind. It helps that Freeman, with his natural gravitas, explains that these penguins do have something like monogamy during mating season. It makes the penguins seem more like humans than they obviously are.
If anything, much of the behavior Freeman’s narration describes does suggest human emotions in these birds. That could very well be true, but I am reminded of a story I heard in NPR that basically said it is impossible to know what any other species is actually feeling in terms of emotions. But then I remember seeing something that made me pause. I was driving home from work one day, hitting the on-ramp to a road I take surrounded by forests, and I saw a doe looking at the body of a dead fawn. The fawn was in the road, clearly killed by a car of some kind, and I couldn’t help but think it was a mother mourning a loss. Was she? I have no idea, but it sure looked that way. And I think that actually describes March of the Penguins quite well. There are lots of facts in there, and if having a bit of empathy for some birds helps the audience understand them, then so much the better.
Grade: A
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