If the role of a documentary is to entertain, then this is five star entertainment. If it is to educate, provoke or challenge, then March of the Penguins, in spite of its Academy Award for Best Documentary, doesn’t cross the line. Emperor penguins, for anyone who hasn’t already seen their story with David Attenborough, National Geographic or most days on the Discovery Channel, rear their young in one of the harshest environments on earth. They choose to huddle through the Antarctic winter, kilometres from any food source, protecting eggs on their feet while winds buffet at temperatures so cold they would otherwise snap-freeze, and often do. It’s a peculiar state of affairs and proof, if any were needed, that evolution has a warped sense of humour.

Jacquet and his team spent years on the ice shelf. They huddled with penguins during black winters, swam freezing oceans with vicious leopard seals, and watched birds march from afar to capture some truly astounding images edited with considerable flair. Yet to preserve domestic consumption, an unfortunate process of sanitisation has occurred. Freeman’s often twee narration is somewhat earnest - not until the third quarter does he acknowledge that penguins die. Until then, they merely ‘pass over’. Likewise, a veil has been drawn over sexual processes and the gorier aspects of penguin life in favour of fluffy chicks. None the less, March of the Penguins presents a charming evocation of what it takes to be a man-bird on the ice. And it takes a lot. If you subscribe to reincarnation, pray hard that you don’t come back as an Emperor penguin.

// COLIN FRASER