| Product: |
March of the Penguins - Luc Jacquet (DVD) |
| Date: |
28/11/05 (881 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: brilliant photography
Disadvantages: awful soundtrack, talking penguins
Why did I get up from my armchair, go to the cinema, buy a ticket and watch a documentary on animals what with TV being full of this genre? I must confess that I became a victim of the media hype, when the film was released in Germany, penguins were suddenly everywhere! I read an enthusiastic film review in my daily newspaper, a women’s mag advised me to take a box of Kleenex with me to the cinema as women always get wet eyes when seeing young animals (aha?), on the radio someone claimed that on a scale of cuteness from 0 to 10, penguin chicks scored 11(!). I had to find out if I would react as predicted, if I was normal so-to-speak.
March Of The Penguins is a French film, as all films are dubbed in Germany, I expected to hear explanations - in case there were any - spoken in German maybe interrupted by some French exclamations to make them more authentic, yet while the names of the people who had made the film and all the technical stuff were appearing on the screen, the shrill voice of a grown-up woman (Emilie Simon) singing like a girl surprised me with the English song ‘I Want To Live In Paradise’. I usually don’t notice the soundtrack of a film at all, this singing, however, was so intrusive that I noticed (and disliked) it at once.
Who is this woman singing for? Certainly not for herself, the film is on penguins, not on human beings, does she sing for a female penguin then? Why would a penguin think of paradise? What would be paradise for a penguin given it could think? You may find it odd to begin a film review with the soundtrack, but it’s justified here because the sense of bewilderment that befell me right at the beginning didn’t leave me up to the end.
Luc Jacquet, a biologist and director of TV documentaries on animals for more than 12 years shot this film with a crew of four men over a period of 14 months based in the French research station Dumont-D’Urberville in Antarctica. The film starts with a group of emperor penguins emerging out of the ocean, follows them to their annual meeting place where they mate, breed and feed their chicks and then accompanies them back into the ocean.
There is no plot, of course, what makes the film interesting in spite of this is the extraordinariness of the penguins’ living conditions. After laying their single eggs, the females trudge, slither and toboggan (yes, they can do this!) in single file to feeding grounds 110 km from their breeding site, for two months the male sits on the egg to keep it warm and let the chick hatch awaiting the return of the female bringing food for their offspring. Only when the mother returns does the father then make its own trek to the distant coast to ease its hunger. And all this while blizzards and catabatic gales are raging and the temperature is down to – 57°C!
“How strange are the ways of nature” is what I thought, couldn’t the penguins live somewhere else where the living conditions weren’t so harsh? But then: they’ve lived in Antarctica for thousands of years and the fact that they’ve survived as a species shows that the conditions are obviously bearable.
Whenever I see a documentary on animals I wonder how the film was shot, how did the photographer(s) get so close to the animals? Did they really get very close or did they use a long telephoto lens? In the case of March Of The Penguins the photographers Laurent Chalets and Jérôme Maisons didn’t have to face dangers or overcome obstacles, not having made any negative experience with human beings penguins are not afraid of them and allow them to get near, I’ve seen pictures of the photographers lying in front of a penguin taking photos of the egg. From an article on the net I learnt that the ‘only’ problem were the frequent gales, it’s not possible to hold a camera steady when the speed of the gale is 150 miles per hour!
In order not to make the film too abstract but bring it closer to the audience, single penguins are picked out, we follow a male and a female one through the whole cycle, I doubt that these two are always the same – after all one penguin looks like the other! - but the idea isn’t bad, I can understand these animals better if my attention concentrates on two individuals instead of a group of several thousand.
The camera is never higher than the penguins’ heads, often lower thus making them appear taller than they are (they’re about 1m tall) and especially when close-up views are shown giving them an aura of stars or heroes. As if that weren’t already too much of humanising the animals, Jacquet had the deplorable idea to engage a man, a woman and a boy who speak for the penguins, “Only some more days, then our small supply of food will be finished, be brave, my little one!” When an egg is exposed to the cold (some seconds are enough) and the chick therein dies, its mother tries to steal an egg because “she’s overwhelmed by grief”, a sea leopard snatching a penguin and pulling it under water is called a “monster”, and so on and so forth.
When Americans find a foreign film they like, they can’t just buy and show it in the USA, they always have to faff about it, obviously Americans can’t be expected to digest a European film neat. When the French film ‘Three Men And A Baby’ was a big hit in Europe, they bought the plot and remade it with American actors, as French penguins can’t be exchanged for American penguins they decided to do something about the vocal accompaniment, instead of having three speakers they only have one, the actor Morgan Freeman; I don’t know which version you can watch in GB.
These talking penguins - together with the songs and the esoteric music - turn the film into some kind of kitschy infotainment, pity really. With its wonderful pictures of a grandiose part of the planet, as yet unspoilt by human beings, the documentary could just be great but it belittles itself.
Jacquet won’t be bothered by my opinion, though, he clearly did not want to make simply a documentary, the Catholic Frenchman had a ‘Passion Of The Penguins’ in mind with the message that only through sacrifice life is possible, hardship must be endured without complaining and looking for an easy way out, and with salvation (paradise!) waiting at the end.
I found an interview on the net in which Jacquet voices his surprise at the immense success the film has worldwide, it’s a box-office hit in Europe, China and Japan and the second-biggest grossing documentary ever (after Fahrenheit 9/11) in the USA. He concentrates on the financial side, unfortunately he doesn’t comment on the reception the film has had in the USA; American Christian Fundamentalists have taken over the film so-to-speak, they claim it emphasises what they believe in, they take it as proof against Darwin’s theory of evolution, proof that monogamy is natural and proof for the existence of God. Anti-abortionists say the nurturing penguins are a stinging lesson to women contemplating a pregnancy termination, workshops are organised in which families are invited to watch the film and then discuss (and adopt, of course) the values it shows.
Give the penguins a break, they’re only birds!
Secularists point out that emperor penguins have a freewheeling sexual life and that homosexuality among the penguin species is not uncommon [only recently there was a ‘scandal’ in the zoo of New York :-)]. The question should not be, “What would Jesus do?” but “Who would Jesus do?” The last word for viewers not affected by the religious overtones of the film comes from George Will from the Washington Post, “If an intelligent Designer designed nature, why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?”
Would I recommend the film? Yes, for viewers interested in geography and ornithologists, for viewers enjoying stunning photography, for children and adults who love animals in general and penguins especially, ***but do take earplugs with you***!
Btw, I forgot to take tissues with me but didn’t need any anyway, nobody in the cinema did! As to the cuteness factor of penguin chicks, well, yes, they are cute, but I prefer kittens, I can play with them and they respond to me and I don’t have to freeze my back bottom off if I want to be near them!
Director: Luc Jacquet
Script: Luc Jacquet, Jordan Roberts
Photography : Laurent Chalets, Jérôme Maisons
Soundtrack : Emilie Simon
Stars: -------
Release date: June 24, 2005
Running time: 85 min.
Studio: Warner Independent Pictures
No age restriction
photography: 5 stars, talking birds 0 stars = 2.5 stars
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Make me happy, leave a comment!
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Summary: one year in the lives of emperor penguins in Antarctica
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susie19 - 15/12/05 My hubby has seen it and was fascinated by the film, he didnt mention the music! Susie |
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