March of the Penguins
Encyclopedia
March of the Penguins (French
: La Marche de l'Empereur) is a 2005 French nature documentary
film. It was directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet
, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society
. The film depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguin
s of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguin
s of breeding age (five years old and over) leave the ocean, their normal habitat
, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship
that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.
It took one year for the two isolated cinematographers Laurent Chalet
and Jérôme Maison to shoot the film, which was shot around the French scientific base of Dumont d'Urville
in Adélie Land
.
The film won the 2005 Academy Award
for Best Documentary Feature.
s use a particular spot as their breeding ground because it is on ice that is solid year round and there is no danger of the ice becoming too soft to support the colony. At the beginning of Antarctic summer
, the breeding ground is only a few hundred meters away from the open water where the penguins can feed. However, by the end of summer, the breeding ground is over 100 kilometres (62.1 mi) away from the nearest open water. In order to reach it, all the penguins of breeding age must traverse this great distance.
The penguins practice serial monogamy within each breeding season. The female lays a single egg, and the co-operation of the parents is needed if the chick is to survive. After the female lays the egg, she transfers it to the feet of the waiting male with a minimal exposure to the elements, as the intense cold will kill the developing embryo. The male tends to the egg when the female returns to the sea, now even farther away, both in order to feed herself and to obtain extra food for feeding her chick when she returns. She has not eaten in two months and by the time she leaves the hatching area, she will have lost a third of her body weight.
For an additional two months, the males huddle together for warmth, and incubate their eggs. They endure temperatures approaching -62 °C, and their only source of water is snow
that falls on the breeding ground. When the chicks hatch, the males have only a small meal to feed them, and if the female does not return, they must abandon their chick and return to the sea to feed themselves. By the time they return, they have lost half their weight and have not eaten for four months. The chicks are also at risk from predatory birds such as skua
s.
The mother penguins come back and feed their young, while the male penguins go all the way back to sea (70 miles) to feed themselves. This gives the mothers time to feed their young ones and bond with them. Unfortunately, a fierce storm arrives and some of the chicks perish.
The death of a chick is tragic, but it does allow the parents to return to the sea to feed for the rest of the breeding season. When a mother penguin loses its young in a fierce storm, it sometimes attempts to steal another mother's chick. At times, the young are abandoned by one parent, and they must rely on the return of the other parent, who can recognize the chick only from its unique call. Many parents die on the trip, killed by exhaustion or by predators (such as the Leopard Seal
), dooming their chicks back at the breeding ground.
The ingenious fight against starvation is a recurring theme throughout the film. In one scene, near-starving chicks are shown taking sustenance out of their father's throat-sacs, 11th-hour nourishment in the form of a milky, protein-rich substance secreted from a sac in the father-penguins' throat sacs to feed their chicks in the event that circumstances require.
The parents must then tend to the chick for an additional four months, shuttling back and forth to the sea in order to provide food for their young. As spring progresses, the trip gets progressively easier as the ice melts and the distance to the sea decreases, until finally the parents can leave the chicks to fend for themselves.
The original French language
release features a first-person narrative
as if the story is being told by the penguins themselves. The narration alternates between a female (Romane Bohringer
) and a male (Charles Berling
) narrator speaking the alternate roles of the female and male penguin, and as the chicks are born their narration is handled by a child actor Jules Sitruk
. This style is mimicked in some of the international versions. For example, in the Hungarian version actors Ákos Kőszegi, Anna Kubik, and Gábor Morvai provide the voices of the penguins, and the German version as seen in German movie theaters (and in the televised broadcast in April 2007 on channel ProSieben) uses the voices of Andrea Loewig, Thorsten Michaelis and Adrian Kilian for the "dubbed dialog" of the penguins. This style of narration is also used in the Danish DVD version.
In contrast, the English language
release has a third-person narrative by a single voice, actor Morgan Freeman
. Similarly, the Austrian channel ORF 1 used for their broadcast in April 2007 the alternate version available on the German "Special Edition" DVD which uses a documentary narration voiceover
spoken by the German actor Sky Du Mont
. Other releases' narrators include the Dutch
version, narrated by Belgian comedian Urbanus
; the India
n version, narrated in Hindi
and English by Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan
, is titled Penguins: A Love Story; the Polish
version, narrated by Polish actor Marek Kondrat
; and the Swedish
version, narrated by Swedish actor Gösta Ekman
. The Tagalog
version is narrated by actress Sharon Cuneta
; it is entitled Penguin, Penguin, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: Penguin, Penguin, How Were You Made?) with the English title as the subtitle. The Tagalog title is similar to that of a Philippine novel and film, Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: Child, Child, How Were You Made?)
Another difference between the various international versions involves the music. The original version uses an original experimental soundtrack by electronic music composer Émilie Simon
, whereas the English language version replaces it with an instrumental score
by Alex Wurman
.
in the US
on 21 January 2005. It was released in France
the next week, on 26 January, where it earned a 4-star rating from AlloCiné
, and was beaten at the box office only by The Aviator during its opening week.
The original French version was released in Quebec
. Subsequently, an English language version was released in the rest of North America
on 24 June 2005, drawing praise from most critics who found it both informative and charming. It has received a 94% "fresh" rating with the consensus "Only the hardened soul won't be moved by this heartwarming doc" on the website Rotten Tomatoes
, which collects film reviews. The movie-going public apparently agreed with that assessment, as the film distinguished itself as one of the most successful films of the season on a per-theatre basis: it became the second most successful documentary released in North America, after Fahrenheit 9/11
, grossing over $77 million in the United States and Canada (in nominal dollars, from 1982 to the present.) It grossed over $127 million worldwide. It's the only movie from Warner Independent to be rated G by the MPAA.
The film was released on DVD
in France on 26 July 2005. The DVD extras address some of the criticisms the film had attracted, most notably by reframing the film as a scientific study and adding facts to what would otherwise have been a family film. This Zone 2
release featured no English audio tracks or subtitles.
An extra on the DVD issue was the controversial 1948 Bugs Bunny
cartoon Frigid Hare
, in which Bugs visits the South Pole
and meets a young penguin fleeing an Eskimo
hunter. The cartoon is not frequently seen because of its stereotypical depiction of the Inuit
hunter, but it was included here uncut and uncensored.
In November 2006, the film was adapted into a video game by DSI Games for the Nintendo DS
and Game Boy Advance
platforms. It features Lemmings
-like gameplay.
In 2007, a direct-to-DVD parody
written and directed by Bob Saget
called Farce of the Penguins
was released. It is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson
and features other stars providing voice-over
s for the penguins. Although the film uses footage from actual nature documentaries about penguins, the parody was not allowed to include footage from March of the Penguins itself.
Director and film crew spent more than 13 months at the Dumont d'Urville Station
where the Institut polaire français Paul-Émile Victor is based. Although the penguins' meeting place, one of four in Antarctica, was known to be near, the day on which it occurs isn't known so they had to be ready every day. Fortunately the gathering that year was huge - more than 1,200 penguins, compared with the norm of a few hundred.
For cameras to operate at -40° they had to use film and to load all the film for the day, as it was impossible to reload outside. Because of the isolation from any film studios it was necessary to remember each shot to ensure continuity and to make sure that all the necessary sequences were finished.
The main challenge of making the film was the weather with temperatures between -58 and -76°F. At dawn the film crew would spend half an hour putting on six layers of clothes, and on some days they couldn't spend more than three hours outside. They worked in winds with gusts up to 125 miles per hour, "which in some ways is worse than the cold temperatures" according to director Jaquet.
praised the film for promoting conservative
family values by showing the value of stable parenthood. Medved's comments provoked responses by others, including Andrew Sullivan
, who pointed out that the penguins are not in fact monogamous for more than one year, in reality practicing serial monogamy. Matt Walker of New Scientist
pointed out that many emperor penguin "adoptions" of chicks are in fact kidnappings, as well as behaviours observed in other penguin species, such as ill treatment of weak chicks, prostitution, and ostracism of rare albino penguins. "For instance, while it is true that emperor penguins often adopt each other's chicks, they do not always do so in a way the moralisers would approve of." Sullivan and Walker both conclude that trying to use animal behavior as an example for human behavior is a mistake.
The director, Luc Jacquet, has condemned such comparisons between penguins and humans. Asked by the San Diego Union Tribune to comment on the film's use as "a metaphor for family values – the devotion to a mate, devotion to offspring, monogamy, self-denial", Jaquet responded: "I condemn this position. I find it intellectually dishonest to impose this viewpoint on something that's part of nature. It's amusing, but if you take the monogamy argument, from one season to the next, the divorce rate, if you will, is between 80 to 90 percent... the monogamy only lasts for the duration of one reproductive cycle. You have to let penguins be penguins and humans be humans."
Some of the controversy over this may be media driven. Rich Lowry
, editor of National Review
, reported in the magazine's blog that the BBC
"have been harassing me for days over March of the Penguins ... about what, I'm not sure. I think to see if I would say on air that penguins are God's instruments to pull America back from the hell-fire, or something like that. As politely as I could I told her, 'Lady, they're just birds.'"
Another controversy involves those who feel that the Emperor Penguin's behavior can be viewed as an indication of intelligent design
, and those who consider it to be an example of evolution by natural selection
in action. Steve Jones
, professor of genetics at University College London
, is quoted as saying, "Supporters of intelligent design think that if they see something they don't understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment." Author Susan Jacoby
claims in her 2008 book, The Age of American Unreason (page 26), that the distributors of the movie deliberately avoided using the word "evolution" in order to avoid backlash from the American religious right, and writes, "As it happens, the emperor penguin is literally a textbook example, cited in college-level biology courses, of evolution by means of natural selection and random mutation. ... The financial wisdom of avoiding any mention of evolution was borne out at the box office ..."
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: La Marche de l'Empereur) is a 2005 French nature documentary
Nature documentary
A natural history film or wildlife film is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat...
film. It was directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet
Luc Jacquet
Luc Jacquet is a French film director from Paris. He wrote and directed the movie March of the Penguins, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature in 2005. His current film is called The Fox And the Child...
, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...
. The film depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguin
Emperor Penguin
The Emperor Penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching in height and weighing anywhere from . The dorsal side and head are black and sharply delineated from the white belly,...
s of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguin
Penguin
Penguins are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers...
s of breeding age (five years old and over) leave the ocean, their normal habitat
Habitat (ecology)
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...
, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship
Courtship
Courtship is the period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. In courtship, a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement or other such agreement...
that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.
It took one year for the two isolated cinematographers Laurent Chalet
Laurent Chalet
Laurent Chalet is a French Director of Photography who has made his career in both the fiction and documentary realms....
and Jérôme Maison to shoot the film, which was shot around the French scientific base of Dumont d'Urville
Dumont d'Urville Station
The Dumont d'Urville Station is a French scientific station located in Antarctica on Île des Pétrels, archipelago of Pointe Géologie in Adélie Land. It is named after explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville...
in Adélie Land
Adélie Land
Adélie Land is the portion of the Antarctic coast between 136° E and 142° E , with a shore length of 350 km and with its hinterland extending as a sector about 2,600 km toward the South Pole. It is claimed by France as one of five districts of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, although not...
.
The film won the 2005 Academy Award
78th Academy Awards
The 78th Academy Awards honored the best films of 2005 and were held on March 5, 2006, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, with Tom Kane making his first appearance as the show's announcer...
for Best Documentary Feature.
Subject matter
The Emperor PenguinEmperor Penguin
The Emperor Penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching in height and weighing anywhere from . The dorsal side and head are black and sharply delineated from the white belly,...
s use a particular spot as their breeding ground because it is on ice that is solid year round and there is no danger of the ice becoming too soft to support the colony. At the beginning of Antarctic summer
Climate of Antarctica
The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on the whole of Earth. Antarctica has the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded on the ground on Earth: −89.2 °C at Vostok Station. It is also extremely dry , averaging 166 mm of precipitation per year...
, the breeding ground is only a few hundred meters away from the open water where the penguins can feed. However, by the end of summer, the breeding ground is over 100 kilometres (62.1 mi) away from the nearest open water. In order to reach it, all the penguins of breeding age must traverse this great distance.
The penguins practice serial monogamy within each breeding season. The female lays a single egg, and the co-operation of the parents is needed if the chick is to survive. After the female lays the egg, she transfers it to the feet of the waiting male with a minimal exposure to the elements, as the intense cold will kill the developing embryo. The male tends to the egg when the female returns to the sea, now even farther away, both in order to feed herself and to obtain extra food for feeding her chick when she returns. She has not eaten in two months and by the time she leaves the hatching area, she will have lost a third of her body weight.
For an additional two months, the males huddle together for warmth, and incubate their eggs. They endure temperatures approaching -62 °C, and their only source of water is snow
Snow
Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by...
that falls on the breeding ground. When the chicks hatch, the males have only a small meal to feed them, and if the female does not return, they must abandon their chick and return to the sea to feed themselves. By the time they return, they have lost half their weight and have not eaten for four months. The chicks are also at risk from predatory birds such as skua
Skua
The skuas are a group of seabirds with about seven species forming the family Stercorariidae and the genus Stercorarius. The three smaller skuas are called jaegers in North America....
s.
The mother penguins come back and feed their young, while the male penguins go all the way back to sea (70 miles) to feed themselves. This gives the mothers time to feed their young ones and bond with them. Unfortunately, a fierce storm arrives and some of the chicks perish.
The death of a chick is tragic, but it does allow the parents to return to the sea to feed for the rest of the breeding season. When a mother penguin loses its young in a fierce storm, it sometimes attempts to steal another mother's chick. At times, the young are abandoned by one parent, and they must rely on the return of the other parent, who can recognize the chick only from its unique call. Many parents die on the trip, killed by exhaustion or by predators (such as the Leopard Seal
Leopard Seal
The leopard seal , also referred to as the sea leopard, is the second largest species of seal in the Antarctic...
), dooming their chicks back at the breeding ground.
The ingenious fight against starvation is a recurring theme throughout the film. In one scene, near-starving chicks are shown taking sustenance out of their father's throat-sacs, 11th-hour nourishment in the form of a milky, protein-rich substance secreted from a sac in the father-penguins' throat sacs to feed their chicks in the event that circumstances require.
The parents must then tend to the chick for an additional four months, shuttling back and forth to the sea in order to provide food for their young. As spring progresses, the trip gets progressively easier as the ice melts and the distance to the sea decreases, until finally the parents can leave the chicks to fend for themselves.
International versions
The style of the film differs considerably between the original French version and some of the international versions.The original French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
release features a first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
as if the story is being told by the penguins themselves. The narration alternates between a female (Romane Bohringer
Romane Bohringer
Romane Bohringer is a French actress, film director, screenwriter and costume designer. She is the daughter of Richard Bohringer and sister of Lou Bohringer. Her parents named her after Roman Polanski....
) and a male (Charles Berling
Charles Berling
Charles Berling is a French actor, director, scenario writer and producer born on April 30, 1958 in Saint-Mandé in Val de Marne .-Biography:Son of a marine physician, he is also the nephew of the literary critic Raymond Picard...
) narrator speaking the alternate roles of the female and male penguin, and as the chicks are born their narration is handled by a child actor Jules Sitruk
Jules Sitruk
Jules Sitruk is a French actor, most widely known for his roles in the 2002 Jugnot film Monsieur Batignole and the 2008 Hammer & Tongs film Son of Rambow....
. This style is mimicked in some of the international versions. For example, in the Hungarian version actors Ákos Kőszegi, Anna Kubik, and Gábor Morvai provide the voices of the penguins, and the German version as seen in German movie theaters (and in the televised broadcast in April 2007 on channel ProSieben) uses the voices of Andrea Loewig, Thorsten Michaelis and Adrian Kilian for the "dubbed dialog" of the penguins. This style of narration is also used in the Danish DVD version.
In contrast, the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
release has a third-person narrative by a single voice, actor Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. He is noted for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won...
. Similarly, the Austrian channel ORF 1 used for their broadcast in April 2007 the alternate version available on the German "Special Edition" DVD which uses a documentary narration voiceover
VoiceOver
VoiceOver is a screen reader built into Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, iOS and iPod operating systems. By using VoiceOver, the user can access their Macintosh or iOS device based on spoken descriptions and, in the case of the Mac, the keyboard. The feature is designed to increase accessibility for blind...
spoken by the German actor Sky Du Mont
Sky du Mont
Sky du Mont is a German actor. He is known for his role in Eyes Wide Shut, as "Santa Maria" in Der Schuh des Manitu and for narrating the German dub of Thomas & Friends...
. Other releases' narrators include the Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
version, narrated by Belgian comedian Urbanus
Urbanus
Urbain Servranckx , also known as Urbain and Urbanus van Anus, is a Belgian stand-up comedian, actor, singer and comic book writer.-Career:...
; the India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n version, narrated in Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
and English by Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan is an Indian film actor. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s as the "angry young man" of Hindi cinema, and has since appeared in over 180 Indian films in a career spanning more than four decades...
, is titled Penguins: A Love Story; the Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
version, narrated by Polish actor Marek Kondrat
Marek Kondrat
Marek Kondrat – Polish TV, film and theatrical actor, director.In 2007 he planned to revolutionize the Polish domestic wine market by introducing Winarium wine stores in every city with a population of over 100,000.- Awards :...
; and the Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
version, narrated by Swedish actor Gösta Ekman
Gösta Ekman
Hans Gösta Gustaf Ekman is a Swedish actor.-Biography:One of Sweden's most appreciated, respected and popular actors; Gösta Ekman started his career in theatre but has also appeared in several Swedish films, including the Jönssonligan series...
. The Tagalog
Filipino language
This move has drawn much criticism from other regional groups.In 1987, a new constitution introduced many provisions for the language.Article XIV, Section 6, omits any mention of Tagalog as the basis for Filipino, and states that:...
version is narrated by actress Sharon Cuneta
Sharon Cuneta
Sharon Cuneta-Pangilinan, better known as Sharon Cuneta, is a popular and multi-awarded Filipino singer, actress and TV host dubbed as Megastar of Philippine Entertainment, fondly called Mega by fans and people from the entertainment industry....
; it is entitled Penguin, Penguin, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: Penguin, Penguin, How Were You Made?) with the English title as the subtitle. The Tagalog title is similar to that of a Philippine novel and film, Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: Child, Child, How Were You Made?)
Another difference between the various international versions involves the music. The original version uses an original experimental soundtrack by electronic music composer Émilie Simon
Émilie Simon
Émilie Simon is a French singer and composer of electronic music.-Émilie Simon:In May 2003, she released her debut album Émilie Simon. The electronic album was critically acclaimed and went on to become a commercial success. To promote her album, she did numerous live performances and TV...
, whereas the English language version replaces it with an instrumental score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
by Alex Wurman
Alex Wurman
Alex Wurman is an American composer hailing from Chicago. He attended Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois...
.
Releases and responses
The first screening of the film was at the Sundance Film FestivalSundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
in the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on 21 January 2005. It was released in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
the next week, on 26 January, where it earned a 4-star rating from AlloCiné
AlloCiné
AlloCiné is a service organization providing information on the programs of french cinema, especially centering on novelties' promotion with DVD information. The enterprise is founded as telephonic communicator, then diversified as internet portal site, which offers sufficient information by fast...
, and was beaten at the box office only by The Aviator during its opening week.
The original French version was released in Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
. Subsequently, an English language version was released in the rest of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
on 24 June 2005, drawing praise from most critics who found it both informative and charming. It has received a 94% "fresh" rating with the consensus "Only the hardened soul won't be moved by this heartwarming doc" on the website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, which collects film reviews. The movie-going public apparently agreed with that assessment, as the film distinguished itself as one of the most successful films of the season on a per-theatre basis: it became the second most successful documentary released in North America, after Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 documentary film by American filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the news media...
, grossing over $77 million in the United States and Canada (in nominal dollars, from 1982 to the present.) It grossed over $127 million worldwide. It's the only movie from Warner Independent to be rated G by the MPAA.
The film was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in France on 26 July 2005. The DVD extras address some of the criticisms the film had attracted, most notably by reframing the film as a scientific study and adding facts to what would otherwise have been a family film. This Zone 2
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
release featured no English audio tracks or subtitles.
An extra on the DVD issue was the controversial 1948 Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
cartoon Frigid Hare
Frigid Hare
Frigid Hare is a 1948 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, released in 1949, and was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese...
, in which Bugs visits the South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
and meets a young penguin fleeing an Eskimo
Eskimo
Eskimos or Inuit–Yupik peoples are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska , Canada, and Greenland....
hunter. The cartoon is not frequently seen because of its stereotypical depiction of the Inuit
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
hunter, but it was included here uncut and uncensored.
In November 2006, the film was adapted into a video game by DSI Games for the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
and Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
platforms. It features Lemmings
Lemmings (video game)
Lemmings is a puzzle computer game developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in . Originally developed for PC and Commodore Amiga, Lemmings was one of the most popular computer games of its time, and several gaming magazines gave it some of their highest review scores at the time...
-like gameplay.
In 2007, a direct-to-DVD parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
written and directed by Bob Saget
Bob Saget
Robert Lane "Bob" Saget is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and television host. Although he is best known for his roles as Danny Tanner in Full House, host of America's Funniest Home Videos and Future Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, Saget is also known outside of television for his blue...
called Farce of the Penguins
Farce of the Penguins
Farce of the Penguins is a 2007 American direct-to-video parody of the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins. The motion picture features Samuel L. Jackson as narrator, with the two main characters being voiced by Bob Saget, who also wrote and directed the film, and Lewis Black...
was released. It is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas before meeting his mentor,...
and features other stars providing voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
s for the penguins. Although the film uses footage from actual nature documentaries about penguins, the parody was not allowed to include footage from March of the Penguins itself.
Production
The DVD version includes a 54 minute film entitled Of Penguins and Men made by the film crew Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Mason about the filming of March of the Penguins.Director and film crew spent more than 13 months at the Dumont d'Urville Station
Dumont d'Urville Station
The Dumont d'Urville Station is a French scientific station located in Antarctica on Île des Pétrels, archipelago of Pointe Géologie in Adélie Land. It is named after explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville...
where the Institut polaire français Paul-Émile Victor is based. Although the penguins' meeting place, one of four in Antarctica, was known to be near, the day on which it occurs isn't known so they had to be ready every day. Fortunately the gathering that year was huge - more than 1,200 penguins, compared with the norm of a few hundred.
For cameras to operate at -40° they had to use film and to load all the film for the day, as it was impossible to reload outside. Because of the isolation from any film studios it was necessary to remember each shot to ensure continuity and to make sure that all the necessary sequences were finished.
The main challenge of making the film was the weather with temperatures between -58 and -76°F. At dawn the film crew would spend half an hour putting on six layers of clothes, and on some days they couldn't spend more than three hours outside. They worked in winds with gusts up to 125 miles per hour, "which in some ways is worse than the cold temperatures" according to director Jaquet.
Political and social interpretations
The film attracted some political and social commentary in which the penguins were viewed anthropomorphically as having similarities with, and even lessons for, human society. Michael MedvedMichael Medved
Michael Medved is an American radio host, author, political commentator and film critic. His Seattle, Washington-based nationally syndicated talk show, The Michael Medved Show, airs throughout the U.S...
praised the film for promoting conservative
Social conservatism
Social Conservatism is primarily a political, and usually morally influenced, ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values. Social conservatism is a form of authoritarianism often associated with the position that the federal government should have a greater role...
family values by showing the value of stable parenthood. Medved's comments provoked responses by others, including Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Michael Sullivan is an English author, editor, political commentator and blogger. He describes himself as a political conservative. He has focused on American political life....
, who pointed out that the penguins are not in fact monogamous for more than one year, in reality practicing serial monogamy. Matt Walker of New Scientist
New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
pointed out that many emperor penguin "adoptions" of chicks are in fact kidnappings, as well as behaviours observed in other penguin species, such as ill treatment of weak chicks, prostitution, and ostracism of rare albino penguins. "For instance, while it is true that emperor penguins often adopt each other's chicks, they do not always do so in a way the moralisers would approve of." Sullivan and Walker both conclude that trying to use animal behavior as an example for human behavior is a mistake.
The director, Luc Jacquet, has condemned such comparisons between penguins and humans. Asked by the San Diego Union Tribune to comment on the film's use as "a metaphor for family values – the devotion to a mate, devotion to offspring, monogamy, self-denial", Jaquet responded: "I condemn this position. I find it intellectually dishonest to impose this viewpoint on something that's part of nature. It's amusing, but if you take the monogamy argument, from one season to the next, the divorce rate, if you will, is between 80 to 90 percent... the monogamy only lasts for the duration of one reproductive cycle. You have to let penguins be penguins and humans be humans."
Some of the controversy over this may be media driven. Rich Lowry
Rich Lowry
Richard A. Lowry is the editor of National Review, a conservative American news magazine, and a syndicated columnist.-Career:...
, editor of National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, reported in the magazine's blog that the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
"have been harassing me for days over March of the Penguins ... about what, I'm not sure. I think to see if I would say on air that penguins are God's instruments to pull America back from the hell-fire, or something like that. As politely as I could I told her, 'Lady, they're just birds.'"
Another controversy involves those who feel that the Emperor Penguin's behavior can be viewed as an indication of intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
, and those who consider it to be an example of evolution by natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
in action. Steve Jones
Steve Jones (biologist)
John Stephen Jones is a Welsh geneticist and from 1995 to 1999 and 2008 to June 2010 was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His studies are conducted in the Galton Laboratory. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on...
, professor of genetics at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, is quoted as saying, "Supporters of intelligent design think that if they see something they don't understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment." Author Susan Jacoby
Susan Jacoby
Susan Jacoby is an American author. Her 2008 book about American anti-intellectualism, The Age of American Unreason, was a New York Times best seller. She is an atheist and secularist. Jacoby graduated from Michigan State University in 1965...
claims in her 2008 book, The Age of American Unreason (page 26), that the distributors of the movie deliberately avoided using the word "evolution" in order to avoid backlash from the American religious right, and writes, "As it happens, the emperor penguin is literally a textbook example, cited in college-level biology courses, of evolution by means of natural selection and random mutation. ... The financial wisdom of avoiding any mention of evolution was borne out at the box office ..."
Awards
- Won - Academy Award for Documentary FeatureAcademy Award for Documentary FeatureThe Academy Award for Documentary Feature is among the most prestigious awards for documentary films.- Winners and nominees:Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the award year...
- Won - American Cinema EditorsAmerican Cinema EditorsFounded in 1950, American Cinema Editors is an honorary society of film editors that are voted in based on the qualities of professional achievements, their education of others, and their dedication to editing itself. The society is not to be confused with an industry union, such as the I.A.T.S.E...
, Best Edited Documentary: Sabine Emiliani - Nominated -BAFTA Awards, Best Cinematography: Laurent ChaletLaurent ChaletLaurent Chalet is a French Director of Photography who has made his career in both the fiction and documentary realms....
, Jérôme Maison- Best Editing: Sabine Emiliani
- Won - Broadcast Film Critics AssociationBroadcast Film Critics AssociationThe Broadcast Film Critics Association is the largest film critics organization in the United States and Canada , representing approximately 250 television, radio and online critics....
, Best Documentary - Won - César Awards, Best Sound (Meilleur son): Laurent Quaglio, Gérard Lamps
- Nominated, Best Editing (Meilleur montage): Sabine Emiliani
- Nominated, Best First Work (Meilleur premier film): Luc Jacquet
- Nominated, Best Music Written for a Film (Meilleure musique): Émilie Simon
- Won - National Board of Review, Best Documentary
- Nominated - Online Film Critics Society Awards, Best Documentary
- Nominated - Satellite AwardsSatellite AwardsThe Satellite Awards are an annual award given by the International Press Academy. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards.- Film :*Best Actor – Drama*Best Actor – Musical or Comedy*Best Actress – Drama...
, Outstanding Documentary DVD- Nominated, Outstanding Motion Picture, Documentary
- Won - Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards, Best Documentary
- Nominated - Writers Guild of AmericaWriters Guild of AmericaThe Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
, Documentary Screenplay Award: Jordan Roberts (narration written by), Luc Jacquet (screenplay/story), Michel Fessler (screenplay) - Won - Rotten TomatoesRotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
' Golden Tomato Awards - Best Reviewed Documentary of 2005, beating MurderballMurderball (documentary)Murderball is a 2005 American documentary film about tetraplegic athletes with partial arm function who play wheelchair rugby. It centers on the rivalry between the Canadian and U.S. teams leading up to the 2004 Paralympic Games. It was directed by Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, and...
and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the RoomEnron: The Smartest Guys in the RoomEnron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history... - Won - Victoires de la musiqueVictoires de la MusiqueVictoires de la musique , is an annual French award ceremony that recognizes the best musical artists of the year.- Male artist of the year :*1985 : Michel Jonasz*1986 : Jean-Jacques Goldman*1987 : Johnny Hallyday...
, Original cinema/television soundtrack of 2006
Further reading
- "How the penguin's life story inspired the US religious right" - David Smith, Guardian Unlimited Film News, 18 September 2005
- "The Unfortunate experience of a Director of Photography" - Amelie Zola, IMAGO, European Federation of Cinematographers, March 2007