Humanized 'Penguins'? That Idea Just Doesn't Fly.

Euphemisms for life's tough realities left my 9-year-old with questions. The penguins don't die while schlepping miles through sub-zero blizzards; they simply, Freeman tells us, "disappear."

Asked my daughter: "Where did they go then?"

Me: "They died."

My daughter: "Why did they say 'disappeared'?"

"March" was directed by Luc Jacquet, who spent four years in some of the world's harshest conditions to capture on film the life cycle of the world's largest penguins. Watching the movie in the theater left me wanting to know about the filmmakers' journey, too; the DVD provides the details.

Laura Johnson, director of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, which previewed the movie, says "March of the Penguins" fits into the category of impressionistic filmmaking, where the pictures are beautiful "and you sense something wonderful about the animals" but in which scientific details are not abundant. "It's just this beautiful appreciation of nature, and I think that does have value."

That said, the original French version was different from the film released in the United States. The original was even more over the top in its anthropomorphizing, allowing the audience to "hear" penguins thoughts.

Anthropomorphism is a legitimate storytelling device, and there is as much variety in wildlife and nature filmmaking as in other filmmaking genres. But don't we lose something when we blur the line between what we know (what penguins do) and what is unknowable (what penguins think and feel)?

Here's one example:

"The pain of her loss is unimaginable," Freeman says of a penguin mother whose chick has died. The film shows her mourning her frozen chick in such grief that she tries to steal another penguin's baby. Never mind that mother penguins recognize their chicks by sound, and that animal experts suggest the mother probably wouldn't even recognize the dead penguin.

My friends are appalled when I suggest the film is anything but wonderful or that it exaggerates the link between penguin and human evolution.

"They are penguins with all their evolved penguin feelings for each other," one said.

Indeed, they are. These birds are tough cookies, having evolved over millions of years to adapt to wind and snow and ice that would freeze the vital parts of any Homo sapiens. That doesn't quite mean the penguins think the same way as the creatures who have figured out how to make a movie about them.