Animal Logic

Snowbirds: The titular stars of the documentary March of the Penguins. Photo Jerome Maison. Courtesy Bonne Pioche Productions/Warner Independent.

Even if Fahrenheit 9/11 didn’t stymie a certain American president’s re-election chances, director Michael Moore did succeed in doing something else: he gave the documentary film, long the brainy runt of the movie world, some major swagger. Along with Fahrenheit 9/11 came such politicized hits as The Corporation, Control Room, Super Size Me and The Fog of War. Now, 12 months later, audiences are turning to another kind of doc for entertainment and edification.

As of Aug. 1, a French-made, Antarctica-shot documentary named March of the Penguins had earned nearly US$17 million in North American theatres, making it the year’s most successful doc; Judy Irving’s The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, about a flock of San Francisco parrots and the pony-tailed oddball who tends to them, grossed nearly US$3 million. Of the year’s other nonfiction movies, only Mad Hot Ballroom and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room garnered anywhere near the viewer enthusiasm and box office of their avian competitors. And while bleeding hearts may lament the lack of polemics in these animal docs, these feathery films still offer surprising perspectives on the world. Like so many movies about animals, they reveal more about the hopes and needs of humans than they do about the species under scrutiny.

In March of the Penguins, director Luc Jacquet and his team travelled to the southernmost regions of the earth, spending 13 months documenting the breeding cycle of the Emperor penguin, which must repeatedly make a 110-kilometre trek from its nesting ground to the sea’s nourishing waters if it hopes for its young to survive the adverse conditions. A patient, richly detailed depiction of a treacherous journey, March of the Penguins closely resembles another doc hit, 2001’s Winged Migration. Like its predecessor, March of the Penguins benefits from technological advances that allow for a closer view of its subjects than has ever been possible.

As anyone raised on a diet of Wild Kingdom and Hinterland Who’s Who can tell you, the nature film hardly counts as a new model for the nonfiction genre. The union of motion pictures and animal subjects dates back to cinema’s origins in the 19th century, with Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic studies of galloping horses. Indeed, the development of the cinematic arts coincides with a wider shift in our regard for the animal kingdom in the wake of the industrial revolution. In his 1977 essay “Why We Look at Animals,” author and art critic John Berger argues that animals became objects for study and appreciation at the point when we no longer had to rely on them for reasons of utility. “Zoos, realistic animal toys and the widespread commercial diffusion of animal imagery all began as animals started to be withdrawn from daily life,” Berger writes.

Loony toons: From left, Marty the Zebra, Alex the Lion, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe in Madagascar. AP Photo/ DreamWorks.

Having succeeded in subjugating them, we made them prisoners of our fantasies. The advent of movies and television created boundless opportunities for us to ponder the ways of our evolutionary lessers. From Rin Tin Tin to Lassie, Bambi to Madagascar, cinema has continually served up images of industrious (and usually very human-like) animals for our delight. Sometimes they offer a fictitious view of animal societies that may closely resemble our own; other times, they depict a special relationship between man (or kid) and beast and the adventures they enjoy. The animals usually bend to our will — unless, like the great ape in King Kong or the great white in Jaws, they threaten us with their primordial force.

Most cutesy animal flicks may escape the attention of adults without offspring, but I was recently reminded of these films’ continuing significance in young lives when a five-year-old cousin regaled me with stories about Two Brothers (2004). Made by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, this film about two tiger cubs made a negligible impact on my grown-up world last year, but it’s exactly the sort of movie that tykes view over and over again. Likewise, Vancouver’s Robert Vince has become the Roger Corman of critter movies thanks to Air Bud, Spymate and many others that combine kid actors with animals that kick footballs and ride snowboards. And while the output of Vince’s Keystone Family Pictures spurns CGI in favour of using animal thespians, there’s a growing abundance of digitally enhanced flicks like Bailey’s Billion$, which opened on Friday (and is the latest farrago to be backed by a hit-starved Telefilm Canada). Starring an affable mutt with animated lips and the voice of comedian Jon Lovitz, Bailey’s Billion$ makes one long for the insouciant wit of a Mr. Ed rerun.

Part of what makes this summer’s hits so unusual is that they appeal as much to adults as they do to children. Rather than rely on the bright, brash marketing that accompanies a Disney or Keystone title, the films have succeeded by word of mouth, a more traditional circumstance for documentaries. And though both March of the Penguins and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill venerate the animal world, their dramas are very much presented in our terms.

As visually sumptuous as March of the Penguins is, there is no disguising the hardships. The penguins’ struggles are inevitably heightened by musical cues that signal moments of whimsy, tragedy and even post-coital bliss. Since we are not introduced to any of the birds by name, the flock functions as a collective character that eventually achieves a hard-won triumph over the elements. This drama of the natural world has been framed for us as Rocky with feathers. But the heart-tugging musical score and occasional use of digital animation are two signifiers of a human presence that can’t stay out of the frame. Another is the filmmakers themselves, seen in their bright orange suits during footage that plays as the credits roll. The glimpses of the penguins reacting to their presence prompt questions about what else in the film has been staged or influenced.

Birds of a feather: Mark Bittner and his charges in The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Photo Daniela Cossali. Courtesy Wild Parrots Film.

As for The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Irving’s endearing portrait of the birds and their human helper, Mark Bittner, is rich in strangeness. The origin of the parrots themselves — mostly cherry-headed conures from South America — remains a mystery. But Irving is ultimately more interested in what the birds mean to Bittner. An amiable middle-aged man who came to San Francisco to become a rock star, he claims not to have paid rent for 25 years. Through his time with the parrots — the cranky old Connor, the affable Mingus, a pair of May-December lovers named Sophie and Picasso, and many others — Bittner finds his life’s purpose. By photographing and documenting the birds, he also discovers a livelihood.

Irving is so charmed by Bittner, it’s not surprising to learn that the two humans became as close as Sophie and Picasso. Her film invites viewers to the same kind of simple solace that Bittner finds in his flock. “They’re a lot purer than we are,” he notes. Though he is wary of anthropomorphizing his friends, Bittner argues there is such a thing as an animal consciousness, distinct from the human version but potentially complementary. It’s a valuable point, even if Bittner’s inspirational tale is only inspirational because he’s immersed himself in an animal world in which he is ultimately the master. In other words, he’s bigger than they are.

German director Werner Herzog offers the nightmare version in another new animal doc, Grizzly Man, out this Friday. Like Bittner, Timothy Treadwell was an animal enthusiast who appointed himself their protector. The difference is his critters of choice were grizzly bears, one of whom killed Treadwell and his girlfriend Amy Huguenard in Alaska in 2003. Constructed largely from footage Treadwell shot before he died, Herzog’s film is a chilling portrait of a man who believes that nature can spare him from the disappointments he experienced among his own kind. Yet Grizzly Man reveals this line of thinking to be the deadliest kind of human arrogance. Even though we have mastered so much of the animals’ domain, there are still places we cannot go. No matter how much love Treadwell has in his heart for the bears, he remains an interloper in their world. He paid for that delusion not only with his life but Huguenard’s as well.

Even so, most animal-centric movies are meant to encourage audiences to dream of happier fates. March of the Penguins offers the illusion that we can creep into their habitats undetected, and witness their lives; The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill suggests that we may even achieve mutually beneficial relationships. Yet what we humans desire from the little beasties inevitably takes precedence over what they might need from us.

Jason Anderson is a Toronto writer.