La Marche de l’empereur (2005) - film review

Every year, the emperor penguins leave the ocean that has been their home during the summer months and walk across the frozen Antarctic wastes to their breeding ground on a safe plateau of ice.  The annual courting ritual culminates in the laying of an egg which the parent penguins must protect assiduously over the harsh winter months.  Whilst the father penguin stays in the breeding colony, keeping the egg warm with his body heat, the mother undertakes the 70-mile long trek back to the sea to fetch nourishment for their chick once it has hatched.  For some, this ordeal is rewarded with the birth of a healthy young penguin, and the cycle of life continues.  For others, there is a less happy outcome...

La Marche de l’empereur has the distinction of being the most successful French film ever to have been released in North America, taking over seventy million dollars at the box office in Canada and the United States.  (The only documentary to top this was Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11.)   The film won the Best Feature Documentary in 2006 and is one of the most popular wildlife documentary films to have been made, yet critical reaction to the film in France was very mixed.

The original French version of the film differs markedly from many of its subsequent international releases in that it uses voiceover dialogue to humanise a family of penguins.  Rather than helping the audience to identify with the subject of the film, as was presumably the intention, it effectively undermines virtually all of the film’s poetic charm, particularly as the dialogue is of the kind you would expect to find in a children’s cartoon.  The soundtrack did not help either, since this consisted of electrogroove music and songs that manage to be both irritating and totally inappropriate for the film’s subject.  Thankfully, many of these faults were corrected for the DVD release.

The making of La Marche de l’empereur proved to be almost as big an ordeal as the story it tells.  Luc Jacquet took four years to develop a script and it was another couple of years before the film reached the screen.  The shooting of the film was fraught with danger for its photographers Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Maison, although their efforts were rewarded with some spectacular footage.  This is a film that is extraordinarily effective in evoking our sense of wonder at the beauty and cruelty of the natural world.  You think life is tough?  Just be grateful you’re not an emperor penguin.

© James Travers 2008

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