There they come, trudging along, straight upright on stubby legs,shoulders swinging back and forth with each step, coming into focus onthe screen just as I' m eating my first bite of popcorn. Then Morgan Freeman's voice informs us that these beings are on a long and difficult journeyin one of the most inhospitable places on earth, and that they are drivenby their "quest for love. "I've long known the story of the emperor penguin, but to see thesheer beauty and wonder of it all come into focus in the March of thePenguins, the sleeper summer hit, still took my breath away. As the moviecontinues, everything about these animals seems on the surface utterlydifferent from human existence; and yet at the same time the closer onelooks the more everything also seems familiar.
Stepping back and considering within the context of the vastdiversity of millions of other organisms that have evolved on the treeof life — grass, trees, tapeworms, hornets, jelly-fish, tuna andelephants — these animals marching across the screen are practicallykissing cousins to us.
Love is a feeling or emotion — like hate, jealousy, hunger,thirst — necessary where rationality alone would not suffice to carrythe day.
Could rationality alone induce a penguin to trek 70 miles overthe ice in order to mate and then balance an egg on his toes while fastingfor four months in total darkness and enduring temperatures of minus-80degrees Fahrenheit?
Even humans require an overpowering love to do the remarkablethings that parents do for their children. The penguins' drive to persistin behavior bordering on the bizarre also suggests that they love to aninordinate degree.
I suspect that the new breed of nature film will becomeincreasingly mainstream because, as we learn more about ourselves fromother animals and find out that we are more like them than was previouslysupposed, we are now allowed to "relate" to them, and therefore toempathize.
If we gain more exposure to the real — and if the producers andstudios invest half as much care and expense into portraying animals asthey do into showing ourselves — I suspect the results will be as profitable, in economic as well as emotional and intellectual terms —as the March of the Penguins.