Penguin movies are all the rage. It’s not a genre with many productions, but some of them are quite successful. Penguins attract viewers. People are fascinated by these creatures that have wings but don’t fly and who prefer to walk on two legs. Two penguin movies were added to the collection in 2024 and both won over the audience, even if some film critics were not enthusiastic. One of them is ‘The Penguin Lessons‘, based (with many additions and changes) on the memoir of English teacher Tom Michell and directed by Peter Cattaneo, who gained fame with the insolent ‘The Full Monty’. This movie is anything but insolent. It’s a sweet and human movie, which seems to confirm the saying I read or heard recently that any movie or book that creates emotion contains a not negligible dose of melodrama. I liked the movie. As in many other cases, my opinion is closer to that of the viewers than to that of the film critics.
Tom Michell, the main heroof the film, arrives in Argentina on the eve of the 1976 coup d’état to take up his position as an English teacher at a boarding school attended by boys from the richest and most powerful families in the country. He seems to be a guy devoted to his profession, hiding behind a cynical humor and an apparent indifference to what is happening around him personal traumas from the past and a crushing loneliness. His life changes when he finds himself with a penguin in his arms (literally), a bird that he had rescued from a beach in Uruguay to impress a woman he had met in a dance club. The penguin, named Juan Salvador, will turn out to be not only a creature that needs care and that when he receives it responds with affection. He will change Tom’s life and that of those around him, his way of teaching lessons and connecting with the naughty and spoiled students, his relationships with those around him – his colleagues and housekeepers Maria and Sofia – grandmother and granddaughter – , who will connect him to the realities around. Horrors are happening outside the walls of the school, as the military regime has installed a violent repression, including abusive arrests and disappearances of political opponents and those suspected of sympathizing with them. The effects of what happens outside the walls of the elite school will not be slow to show in Tom’s life. Juan Salvador will also play an important role.
The discussion about the way in which the most tragic events of history are reflected in films can be reopened. In ‘The Penguin Lessons‘ there are two narrative plans or perhaps even two different films. One is the story of a cynical and disappointed teacher of English language and literature in a foreign country, who regains his humanity through his relationship with the cute animal. The other is the representation of the cruel reality around him, with people arrested on the street, many missing without a trace, searched for by wives and mothers who do not give up hope of seeing them again or at least elucidating their fate. The hero’s confrontation with reality is played with the cinematic tools of a ‘feel good’ comedy. Legitimate? I think so, but for that we have to accept the cinematic convention. Just like in ‘The Night Porter’ or ‘La vitta è bella’ or similar ones. Anyway, in my opinion, the film manages to bring up successfully the dilemma of the stranger who tries to remain uninvolved and who is confronted with his own cowardice when he sees someone close to him being arrested in broad daylight and does not have the courage to intervene. Steve Coogan delivers an exceptional acting performance and practically supports the entire film. Jonathan Pryce, another actor I greatly appreciate, seemed to me under-cast in the role of the school principal, a role he could have gotten more out of. Two wonderful Argentine actresses that I didn’t know complete the cast with personality and dignity – their names being Vivian El Jaber and Alfonsina Carrocio. The cinematography manages to very well recreate the atmosphere of 1976 in Argentina, and the documentary sequences and inserted texts place the film in the historical context of events that still have repercussions and implications today. ‘The Penguin Lessons‘ manages to create emotion and give food for thought as well. And me, if I ever feel the need for the services of a psychoanalyst, I will look for a penguin.