Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2006
- See it or die!

If survival stories are you, then go and see March of the Penguins (G). This is a fascinating documentary feature (80 minutes) that is just as good as or better than any Hollywood drama.

On first impressions you wouldn’t think so. Set in the South Pole, the storyline promises tedium: a group of penguins move back and forth between the sea and a breeding ground. Thanks to how these Oscar-winning French filmmakers have made this the results are less tedious and almost always absorbing.

The filmmakers must know the limitations of such a documentary; they have crafted superb and sensitive storytelling out of it with music touching the right notes and cinematography beautifully capturing the icescape and penguins perfectly. 

Resonant and subtly emotive narrator Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby, The Shawshank Redemption) also keeps it together. He opens the narration by evoking the unequivocal loneliness of the penguins’ isolation and then offers the hook: throughout a year these penguins march through the South Pole seeking a mate, breed, and raise offspring, and leave.

This is a “love” story set up like a Hollywood romantic story with playfulness, humour, courtship and competition. Some scenes are compelling: the males’ huddle together to protect the eggs of their offspring during a ferocious blizzard and wind while the females’ journey from the breeding ground back to the sea for feeding; it’s dramatic. Some eggs and chicks will die; it’s moving. The southern lights are eye boggling. The penguins themselves are fascinating creates to watch as the elements around them unfold.

Whether someone thinks this documentary is an argument for the family, which some have done naturally enough, or for evolution, arguably a proposition here, comes secondary to the process of viewing and watching a fascinating story unfold. Just watch and wonder at amazing nature.