March of the Penguins: (Alex Wurman) Not the first
and probably not the last documentary made about the yearly cycle of
life for a penguin, French filmmaker Luc Jacquet's
March of the
Penguins was originally released in his own country with a quirky
electronic score by Emilie Simon. Picked up for a major theatrical
release in the United Stated, it features the narration of Morgan
Freeman and a new score by Media Ventures product Alex Wurman. With word
of mouth publicity that eventually spilled over into major network news,
March of the Penguins became the second-highest grossing
documentary of all time in America and was still raking in theatrical
profits six months after its release. While the quality of the film is
very strong, humanity's fascination with the cute and cuddly penguins
persists (even when we see some of those old National Geographic shows
when hundreds of them slide down giant ice mountains over cliffs...
sometimes to their deaths, and people still seem to love it). As lovable
as any IMAX style nature documentary,
March of the Penguins is
well executed on every level and truly merits its financial reward.
After the monumental success of some of the television and feature film
documentaries relating to other water creatures in recent years, it's
hard not to become attached to George Fenton's massively orchestral
approach for the
Blue Planet stories. Quite to the contrary, Alex
Wurman tackled
March of the Penguins with a far more intimate
touch in mind. Rather than scoring the vistas in the usual IMAX fashion
of flowing orchestral beauty, Wurman interprets the desolate realities
of Antarctic weather rather than the perspective of that scenery from
the warmth of a theatre seat. He splits his attention between this and
the intimate and cute portrayals of the penguins themselves, with a
rhythmic movement that mirrors that of those penguins.
Therein exists the extent of the "marching" heard in
the score. Not bombastic processions, but rather one bubbly, simple
rhythm for light percussion after another. The instrumentation is
limited to moderate string and woodwind sections, accompanied most
notably by piano and a few solo woodwinds and electronic, ambient sound
design. A very soothing score, Wurman's
March of the Penguins is
not demanding at any point, with flute and piccolo flutterings over
calming strings and gentle piano. Several melodic ideas are woven into
very subtle styles influenced by several world cultures (the flute is
good at carrying over sounds from many exotic locales) due likely to the
lack of the penguins identity with any one human culture, as well as the
fact that Antarctica is divided into many territories controlled by
countries around the world. Percussively quirky rhythms hail some of
Thomas Newman's more lighthearted works, and the minimalist styles on
piano are a nod to Mychael Danna. The highlight of the album is "The
March," which features a boundless optimism in its rhythmic sounds and
use of polar ends of the orchestral spectrum. In the end, though, there
is a nagging problem that pulls at
March of the Penguins, and
that is the programming that listeners will have to detune when watching
this film. There are moments when the scenery screams out for some John
Barry treatment; something close to Fenton or Alan Williams' work in the
area that would go well with the taste of the popcorn in the theatre.
The lack of epic proportions in the orchestral presence, even for only a
few vistas throughout the film, is an issue that doesn't seem to bother
many professional listeners of this Wurman music. But if the smaller
scale music of Wurman cannot sustain the warmth of the animals, nor
represent the grand scope of the location (despite its desolation), then
the score for
March of the Penguins could conceivably fail. A
good balance between the epic sounds that documentaries of this size
inevitably demand and the effective personal nature of Wurman's music
for the penguins themselves was a worthy possibility to investigate.
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The insert includes a list of performers and a note from Wurman about the score.
