[CU-Movies] Free Showing of "March of the Penguins" this Wednesday at the University Y

[David L. Noreen]

     Here's an upcoming free campus film that I just got an
e-mail about today:

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As part of the University YMCA Reel World Film Series, SECS
(Students for Environmental Concerns) will be showing "March
of the Penguins" (2005) this WEDNESDAY (note the day), January
25th at 7:30pm on the big screen in Latzer Hall. The film is
free and open to the public!
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This film was just in theatres last summer; I had hoped to get
to see it then, but ended up being a little busy at the time,
so I'm glad I have a chance to catch it on Wednesday at the Y.

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Here's Roger Ebert’s Review:

March of the Penguins 
BY ROGER EBERT / July 8, 2005 
	Cast & Credits
Narrator: Morgan Freeman

Warner Independent Pictures presents a documentary directed by
Luc Jacquet. Written by Jordan Roberts. Running time: 80
minutes. Rated G. 


After a long summer of feasting, their bodies stately and
plump, the emperor penguins of Antarctica begin to feel,
toward autumn, a need to march inland to the breeding grounds
"where each and every one of them was born." They are all of a
mind about this, and walk in single file, thousands of them,
in a column miles long. They all know where they are going,
even those making the march for the first time, and when they
get there, these countless creatures, who all look more or
less the same to us, begin to look more or less desirable to
one another. Carefully, they choose their mates.
This is not a casual commitment. After the female delivers one
large egg, the male gathers it into a fold of his abdomen,
plants his feet to protect the egg from the ice below, and
then stands there for two months with no food or water, in
howling gales, at temperatures far below zero, in total
darkness, huddled together with the other fathers for warmth.
The females meanwhile, march all the way back to the sea, now
even more distant, to forage for food, which they will bring
when the spring comes, if they know it must. When the females
return to the mass of countless males, they find their mate
without error and recognize the cries of chicks they have
never seen.
"March of the Penguins" is simply, and astonishingly, the
story of this annual cycle. It was filmed under unimaginable
conditions by the French director Luc Jacquet and his team,
including the cinematographers Laurent Chalet and Jerome
Maison. There is not much to choose from in setting up their
shots: On the coldest, driest and (in winter) darkest
continent on Earth, there is snow, and there is ice, and there
are penguins. There is also an ethereal beauty.
Although the compulsion to reproduce is central to all forms
of life, the penguins could be forgiven if they'd said the
hell with it and evolved in the direction of being able to
swim to Patagonia. The film's narrator, Morgan Freeman, tells
us that Antarctica was once a warm land with rich forests that
teemed with creatures. But as the climate grew colder over
long centuries, one lifeform after another bailed out, until
the penguins were left in a land that, as far as they can see,
is inhabited pretty much by other penguins, and edged by seas
filled with delicious fish. Even their predators, such as the
leopard seal, give them a pass during the dark, long, cold winter.
"This is a love story," Freeman's narration assures us,
reminding me for some reason of Tina Turner singing "What's
Love Got to Do With It?" I think it is more accurately
described as the story of an evolutionary success. The
penguins instinctively know, because they have been hard-wired
by evolutionary trial and error, that it is necessary to march
so far inland because in spring, the ice shelf will start to
melt toward them, and they need to stand where the ice will
remain thick enough to support them.
As a species, they learned this because the penguins who
paused too soon on their treks had eggs that fell into the
sea. Those who walked farther produced another generation, and
eventually every penguin was descended from a long line of
ancestors who were willing to walk the extra mile.
Why do penguins behave in this manner? Because it works for
them, and their environment gives them little alternative.
They are Darwinism embodied. But their life history is so
strange that until the last century, it was not even guessed
at. The first Antarctic explorers found penguins aplenty, but
had little idea where they came from, where they went to, and
indeed whether they were birds or mammals.
The answers to those questions were discovered by a man named
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, in one of the most remarkable books
ever written, The Worst Journey in the World (1922). He was
not writing about the journey of the penguins, but about his
own trek with two others through the bitter night to their
mating grounds. Members of Scott's 1910-1912 expedition to the
South Pole, they set out in the autumn to follow the march of
the penguins, and walked through hell until he found them,
watched them, returned with one of their eggs. Cherry-Garrard
retired to England, where he lived until 1959; his friends
felt the dreadful march, and the later experience of finding
the frozen bodies of Scott and two others, contributed to his
depression for the rest of his life.
For Jacquet and his crew, the experience was more bearable.
They had transport, warmth, food and communication with the
greater world. Still, it could not have been pleasant,
sticking it out and making this documentary, when others were
filming a month spent eating at McDonald's. The narration is a
little fanciful for my taste, and some of the shots seem funny
to us but not to the penguins. When they fall over, they do it
with a remarkable lack of style. And for all the walking they
do, they're ungainly waddlers. Yet they are perfect in their
way, with sleek coats, grace in the water and heroic
determination. It's poignant to watch the chicks in their
youth, fed by their parents, playing with their chums, the sun
climbing higher every day, little suspecting what they're in for.