Many cinemagoers are seeing God's hand at work in the last place God made - the Antarctic, setting for a smash-hit French documentary about the, ahem, mating habits of penguins. Donald Clarke talks to director Luc Jacquet about his film's curious embrace by US fundamentalists.
'IN THE harshest place on earth, love finds a way." Thus blubs the poster for this year's most unexpected box-office smash. It's a grisly little phrase, isn't it? One imagines a horrid romance progressing between Angelina Jolie the nun and Matthew McConaughey the priest as both strive to save starving children in the Gobi Desert.
As it transpires, the lovers are Emperor penguins and the harsh place is the icy landscape of Antarctica. Last summer, March of the Penguins, a beautifully filmed, queasily anthropomorphic documentary by one Luc Jacquet, achieved the silver-medal position in two cinematic league tables. It became the second most successful documentary ever in the United States (gold medal: Fahrenheit 9/11) and the second most successful French film in that market (gold medal: Amélie).
When, at the end of September, March of the Penguins finally ended its two-and-a-half month run in the US top 10, the picture had taken in over $70 million. This would be disappointing for any film with exploding buildings, but is impressive for a movie starring flightless birds, kelp and ice.
Unsurprisingly, the American media has been alive with speculation as to what it all means. People with tofu in their fridge have taken their children along to have a last glance at an environment under threat from the proliferation of greenhouse gases. People with fish symbols on their bumpers have, on the other hand, suggested that the film offers evidence of God's hand in the process of evolution.
It is difficult to make sense of this argument for - to use the preferred barmy jargon - the principle of intelligent design. Yes, the penguins' story is remarkable. Each year the birds leave the sea and tramp deep into the inhospitable interior where, after copulation, the males, foodless and frozen, guard the eggs for months while their mates return to feed. But is this phenomenon any more difficult to explain than the hummingbird's hover, the salmon's leap or Katie Holmes's pregnancy?
Luc Jacquet is having none of it. Speaking through a translator in a Soho hotel, the burly Frenchman appears quite taken aback by his success. "The film was a huge success in France before all this, you know," he says. "And in Japan and in Thailand. But now it is like we are living in fairytale land."
So, how does it feel to be lauded by the same American fundamentalists who urge school boards to teach creationism?
"I answer that this phenomenon must not be exaggerated," he says. "I condemn completely that you can take this film hostage and use it to proselytise. Everyone is free to think what they wish afterwards, but I do not like when they find arguments to promote things that are not there. If you ask me what I think of intelligent design, it is taking us 300 years backwards."
Does he now regret not making specific references to evolution in the film? "The film is full of references to evolution. The whole entry into the film is a synopsis of the evolution of the planet."
Well, sort of. But the narration, read with drowsy solemnity by Morgan Freeman, does couch that explanation in metaphor and simile. The subtext is more than vague enough to elude a constituency notoriously unfamiliar with irony. "But my aim was quite clearly to not enter into a scientific language. For me, scientific vocabulary is a wall that people find hard to get through. I said the same thing with far simpler words."
However, when pressed as to why the film has struck a chord in America, Jacquet does address one of the favourite themes of social conservatives. "If you look at the key elements in American cinema - speed in editing, sex, violence - those elements are not exactly present here. The people I have met say they are looking for something positive in cinema and that is here."
Now, this is confusing. One of the critical arguments against the film deals with the way the penguins are slyly gifted human emotions and desires. A less kind writer than me might suggest that sections of the voice-over recall, at best, those Disney TV films in which cougars escorted their litter through bear-infested uplands or, at worst, Hammy Hamster's Tales of the Riverbank.
If, indeed, we are dealing with surrogate human beings, then March of the Penguins could be classed as a wildly sexually explicit snuff movie. Viewers of this G-rated entertainment can expect to see actual doggy-style humping and a sequence in which one of the actors is torn to shreds by a giant killer beast from beyond the clouds (well, OK, a bird). How's that for sex and violence?
Social conservatives have pointed out that these little black-and-white pseudo-people do, at least, demonstrate the virtues of sticking with one sexual partner. This is partly true. Penguins are, it seems, serial monogamists: they stay with each mate for a year at a time. "Longer than most Californians," I hear red-state wags retort.
We wouldn't be having these peculiar debates if Jacquet had not insisted on imposing such a gooily empathetic narration on his otherwise charming picture. Yet he does not recognise the accusations of rampant anthropomorphism as any kind of criticism.
"I say they are right to talk about anthropomorphism," he says. "What I tried to put in this film is my emotions as a human being. I tried to communicate them to other human beings. I didn't try to make the penguins human, but tried to look for what I felt as I watched them and to communicate that to the audience.
"I think, yes, anthropomorphism is extremely dangerous and forbidden for scientists. But for a storyteller it is an obvious thing to use. It is the emotions coming out of your own body."
Reading the production notes I get the impression that the original French narration identified even more closely with the penguins. The text was, it seems, delivered in the first-person, thus suggesting that the birds were telling their own story.
"The French version contained three voices. These are not the penguins talking, but there is a male voice, a female voice and a young voice, and they did say 'I' and 'we' rather than 'them'. We are inside the story here."
We are used to American versions of European pictures being dumbed down. Is this the opposite? Did Warner Independent Pictures suggest the script be smartened up a tad?
"It must be said they bought the film before it had a huge success anywhere," Jacquet says. "They were really scared that this narration would go over the heads of the American public." Really? That's not quite how it sounds. "So they prepared to take less of a risk and rework it in the third person. But the words are the same. The American version has exactly the same words as the French version. But it is told in that different voice."
Since we are in the business of picking holes in this perfectly lovely film, let us ponder to what extent we can trust the continuity. At one stage a penguin loses control of an egg. We then cut to the egg cracking in the frozen air. Now, that's just not the same egg, is it?
"No. No. But that is cinema," he says shruggily. "I would say maybe it is less reliable than some documentaries. But if I were making a film about JFK we would know all the details. We already know what happened. So I would try to make it more romantic. I am going to make it into a film."
Though one may have reservations about the manner of presentation, the footage that makes up March of the Penguins is undeniably impressive. Filming took place amid the Geological Headland Archipelago colony, a few hundred metres from the French scientific centre of Dumont d'Urville. On pleasant days the crew would take 15 minutes to make their way to the tramping birds. During a blizzard the journey could last up to three hours.
The cold was so severe that Jacquet and his crew, Jérôme Maison and Laurent Chalet, elected to use older, more mechanical film cameras, which, unlike digital equipment, had been proven to work for many years in punishing conditions.
"The real danger is from what we call the katabatic winds," he explains. "They can soar from nothing to a hundred kilometre winds in just a few seconds. And then suddenly you have snow and fog in your eyes and you have lost it."
In these sorts of conditions you would want to be sure to get on with your colleagues. "I think, just like the penguins, any arguments or fallings out are luxuries we can't afford to take," Jacquet agrees. "When you are so isolated, everybody is very aware that each has a responsibility within the group."
Jacquet and his team were fortunate in that the penguins had already become used to seeing the occupants of the nearby research centre pad about in their bright orange parkas. As a result, the crew was able to get impressively close to its subjects. Indeed, sometimes the penguins would stroll right up to the camera and examine it. The film includes some startlingly intimate footage of penguin couples carefully passing eggs from one to other, taking care to keep their precious charges covered at all times.
Such unarguably touching sequences have made March of the Penguins the word-of-mouth success it is. The desire to identify with bipeds from other species is sufficiently strong that it has, despite the logically insecure pronouncements of some fundamentalists, dragged both liberals and conservatives into the same cinemas. As impeccably left-wing a figure as Jodie Foster - west coastal in so many ways - recently discussed how much she and her daughter had enjoyed the film.
In 15 years, when BBC2 is making its I Love the Noughties series, Sir Paul Morley will be there to explain how, in 2005, an axis of Frenchmen and penguins blended the penumbras of disconnected cultural shadows. Or something. By then, of course, the Antarctic will be covered in palm trees and penguins will only be seen on biscuit wrappers.
March of the Penguins opens next Friday
P-P-P-Pick up a penguin -Our top five flightless friends in reverse order . . .
5 PENGUIN BISCUITS - These individually wrapped chocolate biscuits are, when judged by today's glamorous standards, austere and unexciting. But, for anybody between the ages of 35 and 50, a corner of Penguin dunked in sweet tea is positively P- P- Proustian.
4 WHEEZY THE PENGUIN - Unbearably loveable squeezy toy from Toy Story 2, whose asthmatic puffing must count as one of the most mournful sounds in cinema. Unlikely to live long enough to make it into Toy Story 3.
3 PENGUIN BOOKS - These orange-spined paperbacks - bosomy Edna O'Brien titles, freaky Carlos Castaneda tomes - were the only things to have sticking out of your corduroy jacket pocket throughout the 1970s. Then, sadly, they came over all populist. The modern classics are still cool.
2 THE PENGUIN IN BATMAN - In the original comics his menace was a little hard to define. He was, after all, just a funny man in a suit. But Burgess Meredith made a creepy barker out of him in the TV series, while a flippery Danny DeVito was downright revolting in Batman Returns.
1 THE PENGUIN IN THE WRONG TROUSERS (AKA FEATHERS MCGRAW) - The greatest penguin in popular culture, whose evil purpose is obvious to Gromit alone, listens to infuriatingly jaunty music and carries himself with the sinister furtiveness of the title character in Hitchcock's The Lodger. With a rubber glove on his head he resembles a chicken.
