The March of the Penguins is a story of life and of death, survival and defeat. To the general mindset of a teenager, it is just a documentary; I cannot not name you five teenagers who have seen this movie. But I can tell you that they have missed an amazing, touching, beautiful, tear-jerking film.  

This love story tells the tale of the Emperor penguins and their long yearly march to the mating grounds, which can be up to 70 miles. It can take these penguins up to a week to reach their destination, though the trail is not the same every year, for as the ice melts and freezes over the year, new treks are made, yet the penguins still manage to make their way.  

Once the mating ground has been reached, the penguins find a mate, the females out number the males, so occasionally there will be a fight between two or more females, the males, of course, do not mind. Once the mate is found, the companionship begins. If the mating was successful, after a few weeks an egg appears on the female’s feet, and then begins the process of passing the egg from the mother to the father; this process can be tricky and also deadly to the chick inside the egg. The frozen ice can freeze, crack, and then kill the chick. Usually, this happens to the younger couples who have not yet passed an egg before.  Once the mothers successfully complete this task, they take off, since producing the egg cost them over half their body weigh; they will soon starve if they don’t find food.  

As the females travel back to find water to fatten up, the fathers sit on the eggs for months, through blizzard after blizzard. Many eggs freeze, and the baby penguins die. Many adult penguins fall asleep, never to wake up. The eggs soon hatch, and a few days later the mothers return, fattened up and ready to feed their young. The fathers pass the chick onto the mother, the same way the egg was passed. Before the fathers leave for their turn to fatten up (they have not eaten in almost 4 months), they cleverly learn the call of their chick. If they did not do this, they would never find him/her when they returned. While the fathers are gone, a special bond is created between mother and the young; as they grow with each day, the mothers try to get them out of their “nest” to adventure out some. In this process, some chicks die. This tragedy leaves you clenching your heart, as the mother pokes and literally cries at her dead chick; she cries and cries, throwing her head in the air and staring at her once newborn chick. Sometimes the mothers loose their sanity after this and attempt to rob another mother of her newborn; this soon turns into a fight which is broken up by the other mothers.  

When the time is right, the mothers leave their young to survive on their own for a few days. This separation is rough, nearly impossible for some of the young, but a part of life. The young huddle up for survival waiting for their fathers to arrive with food. After the fathers arrive, the young are fed, and again they are left alone. They soon, miraculously, find their way to the ocean, make it their home, and return again, marching to the mating grounds in 3 months, to repeat this process as adults. And so begins and ends the March of the Penguins.