March Of The Penguins Analysis

In Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins we get to follow emperor penguins as they make their annual march to their breeding grounds in Antarctica. We get to see how penguins court each other and how penguin chicks are dependent upon the participation of both parents in order to survive it's first few months. While the movie shares some compelling facts about the penguins it also distorts the viewers in the way that it's narrated. Does the documentary shares similarities to Flaherty's Nanook of the North? My answer is yes. Western views about nature and family are being reflected/celebrated by the use of anthropomorphism storytelling.

In the beginning of the movie we hear Mr. Freeman say, "For millions of years they have made their home on the darkest, driest, windiest and coldest continent on earth. And they've done so pretty much alone." This is a compelling introduction but does not offer us with a evolutionary theory to why they have chosen this special …show more content…
For the english version of the movie the distributors chose a third-person narrative approach done by Morgan Freeman while the french chose to narrate the movie by narrating the movie as the penguins themselves experience the journey. I assumed that the french version would be more sophisticated, maybe include more disturbing footage but I was very mistaken:The french version extremely cheesy. The storytelling in the french movie is so poetic in it's nature that I found it hard to take seriously considering that it's suppose to be a nature documentary. I prefer the english version to the french.
March of the Penguins is undeniably a beautiful movie. It's so impressive to imagine the two french cinematographers efforts when filming the movie and I am not surprised the film was awarded with an academy award in 2005. If their goal was to create a heartwarming documentary then they