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March of the Penguins was the true summer blockbuster of 2005 and the best example of a break-out hit in the past five years. It is a remarkable movie in almost every respect. Artistically, the film is remarkable in its simplicity: a year in the life of Antarctic Emperor penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman. No preaching or proselytizing, no political intrigue or hyperbolic rhetoric, no social commentary or emotional manipulation. Director Luc Jaquet simply took his crew to the bottom of the world and recorded a part of nature hardly anyone has seen in person and few of us had ever heard about. Yet this movie was one of America's top 25 films of 2005 (in terms of domestic box office earnings) and became the second-most successful documentary in history, right behind last year's Fahrenheit 9/11.

The success of March of the Penguins can be measured against nature documentaries in the same genre and the box office generally. The previous top-earning nature documentary was Winged Migration (2003), which earned $11.7 million in the US. March of the Penguins has earned $77.5 million to date. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, another excellent nature documentary released this year, earned a touch over $3 million. Fahrenheit 9/11, which cost $6 million to make, earned $111.2 million, supported by a $15 million (estimated) marketing budget. And Fahrenheit 9/11 benefited greatly from being released in advance of a hotly-contested election for US President. March of the Penguins cost about half as much as Fahrenheit 9/11, had a much more restrained marketing effort, and had no direct connection to politics or pop culture.

March of the Penguins had a higher box office gross in 2005 than all of these movies: The Ring Two ($76.2 million); Constantine ($75.6 million); The Exorcism of Emily Rose ($75.0 million); Sin City ($74.1 million); The Interpreter ($72.6 million); Herbie: Fully Loaded ($66.0 million); Sky High ($63.9 million); Bewitched ($62.3 million); and Cinderella Man ($62.6 million). March of the Penguins earned more than The Island and Stealth combined and had a production budget less than 5% than that of either movie. No wonder The Onion satirized the film's emergence over The Island in a special, fictional guest editorial by Michael Bay.

The success of March of the Penguins didn't seem to hinge on any one particular factor. Morgan Freeman was the only real star of the film, but he never appeared on camera. Majestic scenery, stunningly beautiful shots, and superb editing played an important part, but other films this year had equally beautiful cinematography and fine editing. Some reviewers and commentators suggested that audiences anthropomorphized the penguins' struggle through life as a reflection of the "triumph of the human spirit" shtick. And some people followed the "penguins are just like us!" line much too far. For example, Michael Medved, a radio host popular among religious and cultural conservatives, said the film "passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child-rearing" and compared the penguins' annual journey to their breeding grounds to "humans on a spiritual pilgrimage." He must have overlooked the reality of nature portrayed in the film: Emperor penguins find new mates every year, lost eggs and newborns are abandoned to the cold environment if their parents become lost or die, and as far as we know, pilgrims don't engage in religious worship (the essential aspect of any pilgrimage).

Personally, I think March of the Penguins simply hit the sweet spot in an otherwise dismal year at the box office by tying together several important factors. At its heart, the film offers up a starkly compelling story (from nature, not fiction) and presents it with little adornment. The filmmakers obviously loved the story and the project. People do not spend a year in Antarctica filming a small-budget movie in the planet's harshest environment just to make a buck. Throughout the film, viewers are faced with two equally interesting questions: Why do those penguins live and act like that, and how did they ever capture this movie on film? Nor did the filmmakers shy away from controversy. They could have edited out the scenes of abandoned eggs, cracked and frozen among the rocks of the breeding ground. They might have left scenes of predators attacking and eating prey on the cutting room floor. Instead, they portrayed the idea that "nature is red in tooth and claw" with the same devoted, brilliant, and beautiful presentation as they portrayed the idea that "nature is beautiful in all its creation."

Morgan Freeman begins his narration of the film with, "This is a love story." And he's right. March of the Penguins is a story about penguin-love, but the success of the film is a story about the love of making movies. It is a film that centers around a good, solid, interesting story presented simply and directly amidst captivating scenery. It is a film made by people who understood that the story and its presentation are at least as important (if not more important) than its stars, special-effects budget, marketing strategies, and product tie-ins. Hollywood could learn a lesson from such a love story, in both respects.

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