The March of the Penguins

Wow. Definitely not the feel-good movie of the year. Stop reading if you haven't seen it and want to, cause this just may ruin it for you.

I was so excited to see this movie that we went ahead and did pay per view instead of waiting another week or two to get it on HBO. It started out really great - cause boy, Antarctica is beautiful, and the penguins are Emperor penguins, which are really my favorite (though I just love penguins of all varities - they're just so cool.) And then you see the line forming as they march and slide their way 70 miles to the hatching ground, and you wonder how anyone can see that and hear the narration and think that it's all some bizarre accident of "nature" and not an amazing manifestation of God's hand.

Then the body count starts.

They're not even to the hatching gound and you're seeing some not able to keep up and hearing Morgan Freeman talk non-chalantly about how some, each year, just don't make it cause it's too far away.

But then you're at the hatching ground and you see and wonder again as they choose mates and sing to each other and seem almost as if they genuinely care about their mate and life is once more good. And then...you see the first egg (and this part was really cool - both sexes of penguins have this skin/feather flap on their bellies that they use to cover the egg as it's resting on their claws to keep it off the ice and warm) and you're overwhelmed again by the miracle of life. And you watch in fascination as that first egg they show you is gently transferred from mama penguin to daddy penguin for the remainder of the hatching period. Then fascination turns to horror as the egg slips, drops to the ice, splits open because of the cold, and you see the ice crystals forming along the crack and you know the baby is dead. And then, the penguin parents cry. A deep, heartrending, grief-filled cry.

So after the other parents transfer the eggs, the mama penguins go back the 70 miles to the ocean because producing the egg caused her to lose up to 1/3 of her body weight so she needs to eat. So they slip and waddle back to the ocean - which now that winter is upon them, is actually more than 70 miles away. But finally they find it! And it's fun and happy and they swim and dart around in the ocean...right until the leopard seal EATS THEM. And Morgan Freeman says, "Now the seal has killed two penguins, the mother penguin and her chick who will starve to death since she is not coming back to feed it."

Back to the hatching ground where daddies are struggling to stay alive through whipping winter winds, snow, ice and almost constant night. They huddle together for warmth and keep moving to generate heat. Unfortunately the constant movement causes some of them to drop their eggs. So more baby penguins don't make it. And the older daddy penguins, even if they hold onto their eggs, sometimes don't make it either since they can't eat for 4 months while they incubate the eggs. Penguins falling left and right - worse than any Civil War reinactment you've ever seen.

Before the moms come back, the chicks hatch and the daddies keep them in the same place. But the chicks are hungry and the daddies have no food for them, so now the mamas must hurry back. Except some dads either don't keep the chicks warm enough or the little one starves to death before mom gets there -- and so you see frozen penguin chick corpses with daddies prodding them with their beaks and making that hart wrenching grief cry.

The moms get back, the dads leave to go eat - having lost about 1/2 of their body weight during the 4 months of incubation. They hold the chicks on their feet until it's time for the chicks to try and walk. And it's light and happy again as the fuzzy little chicks waddle around. Right up until the unexpected storm comes. And some chicks don't make it back to their mommies. And you get more keening over frozen, dead, chick corpses. Corpses shown in great detail - because really, everyone needs to remember what these dead chicks look like.

Then the ariel predators start coming after the chicks who are now mobile and out on their own. And you get to see a baby penguin pecked to death and hauled off for food. Right before the moms and dads decide that they penguin chicks are old enough to be on their own, so they march back to the sea (now much closer at least), leaving the chicks alone and you have to see some of the chicks so not wanting their parents to leave that they waddle after them crying, but can't keep up and have to go back to the abandonment like all the other chicks.

Then they finally get to go in the ocean themselves and all you're left wondering is how many will live long enough to go through that nightmare themselves. And you think the movie was mis-named, it should've been named Death March of the Penguins. And then you wonder how many scarred two-year-olds there are out there whose parents took them to see a cute movie about penguins. Cause I'll tell you what. I didn't sleep well last night.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw baby penguin corpses.

(Linked to Bloggin Outloud.)