March of the Penguins is a beautifully crafted documentary with an improbably powerful story line.

The way that the movie begins is particularly ingenious. After panning shots across icebergs, they show a group of distant black figures, standing erect. The picture is fuzzy enough that they could very well be people. And that, of course, is the idea behind the documentary. They could very well be people.

There is something very affecting about the way that the penguins so dutifully tramp back and forth across miles of Arctic wilderness, struggling and dieing on the way, and all to hatch a single chick. There certainly is a lot of tramping. First males and females waddle 70 miles to the hatching grounds, the female lays the egg, gives it to the male, and then waddles back 70 miles to the ocean to feed. Then, as the male huddles against the Arctic wind for up to three months with no food and little water, the female fattens up again in the ocean so that she can come back and feed the chick. While this is going on the male waddles back another 70 miles to the ocean for more food, and so on, trading off until the chick is grown.

All this seems mundane enough, just the behavior of animals doing what is necessary, but the manner in which it is shot, and particularly the score, give it an emotional weight which it doesn't seem like it should have. It reduces to essentials the struggle of people, to fulfill their evolutionary imperative and bring new life into the world. And when we see the penguins huddling together against the bitter wind, shielding their young, we know that it could be us, and in a way is us.

Morgan Freeman does an excellent job as the narrator, not trying to make too merry, and not becoming too earnest either. The drama is liberally interspersed with humorous antics. The narration at times becomes a bit more than it is easy to take. At times the penguins are too anthropomorphized, and it becomes apparent that the documentarians are telling a story with penguins, and not a story about penguins. But it makes little difference in terms of the films effect.

March of the Penguins is a film that you should see. There are no explosions, but it has a good story to tell and tells it well. This was the first real nature documentary I've ever watched, and I think I may watch some others, such as Winged Migration and Microcosmos.