Penguins Are So Sensitive
I saw March of the Penguins yesterday. It's about what you'd expect of a G-rated National Geographic documentary movie: visually stunning but otherwise completely forgettable.
It's sort of a year in the life of an emperor penguin colony. The different ways penguins can die were basically just catalogued; you see one example of each, they show enough so that you know what to imagine, and then cut away. There might have been some specks of blood on the snow in one completely unrelated scene, but that's about all. I do not say this because I am disappointed that it wasn't a penguin snuff film – I didn't really want to see that, and I'm relieved that I didn't – but to illustrate how safely they played it. Although you get a sense of what the penguins face throughout the year, you are left with no idea whatsoever about how well they are doing.
Sadly, you often have no idea if what you are seeing is what the narrator (Morgan Freeman) is describing at the time. I first noticed this when he was describing the darkness of the antarctic winter, and the scenes we were seeing had been shot in sunlight. Some things just can't be other than what they are: eggs hatching, chicks feeding and the like. But for the rest, I often wondered how accurate the film was. Were some scenes speeded up? Others slowed down? I just didn't know. This isn't simply a matter of pedantry: the narration, at times, blatantly anthropomorphizes, and can be nauseatingly sentimental. (Having seen more than my fair share of documentaries about apes, I am quite sensitive to that sort of thing, and it drives me to distraction.) It's more than just what footage stayed in and what came out; it's whether and how they manipulated what was shown. How much of what they show is actually the penguins' story, and how much the filmmakers'?
Not that it was a complete waste of time. It was shot in Antarctica, of course, so the landscape is fantastic; I learned a few new things about penguins; and, of course, penguins are remarkable birds to watch. If only for the penguins themselves and the landscape, it does deserve the big screen; but don't pay more than a matinée price.
It's sort of a year in the life of an emperor penguin colony. The different ways penguins can die were basically just catalogued; you see one example of each, they show enough so that you know what to imagine, and then cut away. There might have been some specks of blood on the snow in one completely unrelated scene, but that's about all. I do not say this because I am disappointed that it wasn't a penguin snuff film – I didn't really want to see that, and I'm relieved that I didn't – but to illustrate how safely they played it. Although you get a sense of what the penguins face throughout the year, you are left with no idea whatsoever about how well they are doing.
Sadly, you often have no idea if what you are seeing is what the narrator (Morgan Freeman) is describing at the time. I first noticed this when he was describing the darkness of the antarctic winter, and the scenes we were seeing had been shot in sunlight. Some things just can't be other than what they are: eggs hatching, chicks feeding and the like. But for the rest, I often wondered how accurate the film was. Were some scenes speeded up? Others slowed down? I just didn't know. This isn't simply a matter of pedantry: the narration, at times, blatantly anthropomorphizes, and can be nauseatingly sentimental. (Having seen more than my fair share of documentaries about apes, I am quite sensitive to that sort of thing, and it drives me to distraction.) It's more than just what footage stayed in and what came out; it's whether and how they manipulated what was shown. How much of what they show is actually the penguins' story, and how much the filmmakers'?
Not that it was a complete waste of time. It was shot in Antarctica, of course, so the landscape is fantastic; I learned a few new things about penguins; and, of course, penguins are remarkable birds to watch. If only for the penguins themselves and the landscape, it does deserve the big screen; but don't pay more than a matinée price.
posted by Dr. Bubbles at 10:07
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