"I couldn't help thinking how easy we have it," my friend said on the way out.

I think I've got it hard enough, actually, but those emperor penguins. Man.

Doesn't quite seem the most sensible approach to life, exactly, though it seems to be working for them.

Just saw March of the Penguins. Amazing. Even better than I thought. And I thought it would be pretty good. The buzz has sure been relentless. (93% rating on rottentomatoes.)

Smart move to lead with the sex scene. Not quite the opening, but in the first ten minutes. Who knew how erotic these creatures were. How sensual. Long slow caresses along each others' cheeks, and necks, right up to the edge of her long, curving beak.

They cut away too quickly, though. Far less sex than you'd see on a national geographic tv special. But it was so tender, so intimate--despite happening right out in the open in front of every other adult emperor penguin in the world--I suspect the filmmakers realized their audience would relate to it in a far more personal way than barnyard animals or "wild beasts" going at it, and dropping the camera angle a few feet would have been interpretted as pornography.

Which gives you a sense just how powerful this movie could be in its stronger moments. (And how much more powerful it could have been with a gutsier filmmaker, unafraid to pull back at moments like these. I guess they were more interested in keeping their G rating than the greatness of their art.)

But the sex scene was not about the sex. It was about the affection. And the intimacy. Just like great human sex. 

And it profoundly challenges one of our basic notions of how we love each other. I can't imagine any human watching this without being struck by the intensity of the intimacy between each penguin pair. With another pair two feet to the right, another two feet to the left, to the front, to the back, pairs surrounding them for acres and acres, literally every adult of their species in the entire world.

Somewhere along the line, we got so caught up in our privacy, that we pretty much equate intimacy with it. Privacy doesn't always produce intimacy, but intimacy requires privacy. That's our 21st century American equation.

But you look at these exquisite penguins and it's clear that we've imposed that. Replace each one with a person--which at this point in this film, I assume 95% of the audience is already doing--and suddenly intimcay takes on a completely different character. The privacy only matters if you let it.

Each pair is so completely locked on to each other, the world around them doesn't seem to exist. If somebody else is watching, that's their business. I'm not letting that stand in the way of my exchange of affection with my little penguin mate.

And then we move on the product of this amazing love.

The egg. Oh my God, what they go through to protect that egg. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but you will not believe what they go endure. Mother and father. Equally, but separately.

And when we see one crack. God. Didn't quite bring me to tears--more like stunned horror--but when the mother cried. If that doesn't break your heart you're not human. Or penguin.

Mainly, I was astounded by how fragile their survival is. Every single emperor penguin on the planet is born in the same spot near the south pole. Every single one returns to that spot year after year to mate. What if something happened to that spot?

What if it does? When, not if. God knows we can't keep our mits off anything.

How could it possibly have gone on like this for (hundreds of thousands?) of years?

And not just the spot itself--it seems like they're incredibly vulnerable bunching the entire population together like that. What if a ferocious storm wipes out the entire colony? Or they get cut down in the march back and can't make it to the sea in time in the annual race against starvation? All the males or all the females wiped out.

I'm sure it's happened. Many times, I presume. I guess that's what all the youngsters in the ocean are for. The ones too young to make the march. When the entire adult colony--or one entire gender from it--is wiped out, it must be up to them to gradually repopulate.

Wow.

And imagine the mating fights the next year, after all the adults of one gender have been wiped out, save the young batch making their first trek.

Which leads me to wonder what the next documentary on this species will be like. God knows where we are right now in one of those cycles.

In this film, the females are the ones fighting for their men at mating time, because there are slightly more of them. Are there? Or maybe there just have been since we've been studying them. How long could that have been? Maybe we're still in a recovery cycle since that last male wipeout.

I have a feeling we're just starting to understand them.

But what we know already . . .

It was glorious.