What I don't remember seeing in The March of the Penguins, a perfect film that illustrates the perfect pointlessness of human endeavor, Julian Barnes writes about.
Apparently the penguins, after the long and arduous walk back from their wives left alone in the empty, icy wilderness with their eggs, come to the shore where something nasty happens.
Faced with the potential feed of fish they need to take home, and the predators that wait for them beneath the cold waters of the sea, they dawdle.
The penguins pace back and forth, I imagine, like anxious husbands in the gynaecology wards, where they imagine what pains their wives endure...
But my imagination cannot grasp this terrible aspect of fear and desire, and tricks of survival- for, as they jostle back and forth, pulled by desire and stopped by fear,
They shoulder the one that takes a step too far, the one that is perhaps somewhat foolhardy or greedy or just out of wits-
They shoulder him in
to test the waters!
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