Cinematherapy: using nature documentaries (Part two), by M. P. Egidi, E. Gioacchini.

As we have recently said during various online discussions, we think that using nature documentaries in the specific context of cinematherapy is absolutely justified, also, as in the case of the March of the Penguins, in cartoon versions.

There is a wide range of contexts in which these documentaries can be used, from those in which the objective is to re-evaluate and recreate the goals of a person’s life (temporarily contracted in the experience of the single person or of the group), to those in which the aim is to underline the importance of resources that are not finding expression.In these situations, the passage that can metaphorically express creatively typically human behaviour (the animal made human) comes back to the person involved with corrections that would be hard to accept with common sense. To be clearer... Modern society has long lost the use of myth and is oriented more to a digital sense than to an analogical one, it doesn’t easily allow process-judgement, nor the underlying caption to the cinema-text, nor the moral teaching. The message of the plot can thus more easily avoid the blocks of censorship and the superficial judgement of rhetorical emptiness, which would otherwise be perceived, and work deeply on the individual. The candour of the animal character, somehow made human, is accepted; therefore critical sense and sense of absurdity, which could be raised by symbolic elements of the text, are bypassed.

In the film March of the Penguins the little animal’s ability to move from the depth of the ocean to the hard, but possible, land is, for example, an important metaphor of the possibility of finding out abilities and resources of which we are not aware; just like the penguin’s march is a good example of a path towards change, toward the possible re-definition of roles.

The generation gap, so strongly highlighted and parodied in the script of the film, suggests reflections overcoming the formal criticism of what is well-known and taken for granted, because it is animals talking about us. The issues tackled are of natural laws as well as of human psychology.

The theme of suffering, of defeat, and that of courage and of the gratuitous way in which favourable events take place, thus seeming to reward perseverance, risk-taking, the wait for something positive can unfold themselves in unexpected environments. This gives them originality and provides the audience with a new point of view. Scientific facts made into a story in the text end up giving strength and credibility to more important messages about relationship, personal attribution of sense, life objectives.

In the final part of the film, man is forced to face himself, his ability to hide truth, to use it selfishly for his own exclusive advantage, or else to change it into an element of progress both for the individual and for the group.

Implied in the story is the fact that all the characters in this kind of documentary or film, both the animals and the human audience, are part of the same territory and need to find a way to cohabitate harmoniously on the same planet.Loneliness, loss of the feeling of belonging to a group, antisocial or unsociable aspects of some personalities can all receive some new suggestions, which could work as motivations for redefining roles in a silent dream of personal stories apparently lost in the conscious memory and then recovered through a positive regression stimulated by the show and for the use of the individual’s Ego.

Photos: from  March of the Penguins
Filmography:
Directed by Luc Jacquet
Produced by Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud, Emmanuel Priou
Co-Producer: Jean-Christophe Bar
Executive Producer:Ilann Girard
Written by Luc Jacquet, Michel Fessler
Narrated by Charles Berling, Romane Bohringer, Jules Sitruk, Amitabh Bachchan, Morgan Freeman
Music by Émilie Simon, Alex Wurman (US version)
Cinematography Laurent Chalet, Jérôme Maison
Editing by Sabine Emiliani, Studio Bonne, Pioche, APC, Buena Vista, International Film, Production France, Wild Bunch,
Canal+, 'Institut Polare Français, Paul-Émile Victor, National Geographic Films
Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures (US), Lionsgate (Canada), Maple Pictures (theatrical Quebec (east of Canada),
Alliance Films (theatrical Toronto (west of Canada)
Release date(s)
France: 26 January 2005
Canada: 20 May 2005
United States:
24 June 2005 (limited), 22 July 2005 (wide)
United Kingdom: 9 December 2005
Australia: 19 October 2006
Running time 85 minutes, 84 minutes (US version)
Country France
Language French (original)
Gross revenue $77,413,017