The Penguin Lessons

 The Penguin Lessons

We could hardly believe what we were watching. This was quite the most extraordinary film we've seen for ages and at the end of Steve Coogan's latest film The Penguin Lessons some of us were reduced to buckets of emotional tears, weeping unaccountably and not really understanding why a film about an English teacher and a penguin had set off so many powerful emotions. So we watched with a mixture of delicious curiosity and much amusement. My wife Bev and I were suitably enchanted. 

In hindsight there could hardly have been less moving and poignant about The Penguin Lessons but it did leave you  crying and not really knowing why. Besides the penguin died at the end of the film and why should that fact alone matter in the least. It wasn't your pet penguin and you didn't invite the said penguin into your family home. You didn't feed the penguin, care for it in the most sympathetic manner and introduce it to a classroom of rowdy, mischievous and disruptive schoolboys in Argentina. You paid to see the film with a cosy tub of of popcorn, a drink and a small bar of chocolate. 

So let's set the scene here and give you a detailed description of what happened in the Penguin Lessons. Steve Coogan, who plays the appropriately scholarly, sarcastic and cynical English teacher Tom Michell, arrives in Argentina in 1976. Argentina is riven by a nasty and sinister military dictatorship, the streets densely populated by aggressive soldiers in uniform and the ever present threat of war. Coogan is the man given the responsibility of handling a group of testosterone fuelled teenage boys who are intent on creating havoc and rebelling fiercely against the system. 

Coogan rocks up at his new job as English school teacher against a backdrop of police arrests on the streets of Argentina, bloodthirsty brutality and general mayhem. He meets Jonathan Price, the learned, professorial, ever so slightly snobbish and condescending head teacher who lectures the Steve Coogan character and leaves us in no doubt that he doesn't trust Tom Michell. The boys are hoodlums and reprobates who need to be sorted out and taught the meaning of the word 'sarcastic'.

Then Coogan, with a restless spirit and an insatiable taste of adventure, flies into the tango cafes of Uruguay where his fellow teacher Bjorn Gustafson, the science man, doesn't really approve of Coogan's love of the high life and his declared passion for wine, women and song. Coogan now settles down in his new flat and finds some kind of domestic stability back in Argentina.

Meeting the first Uruguayan women at a bar, he seduces her with sweet nothings but then finds that she's married and it was all a horrible mistake. It is at this point that the story takes its most bizarre twist. Walking along a beach at dusk, both Coogan and his lady friend accidentally discover a group of heart breaking penguins, one of which is seemingly drowned in an oil slick.

Now the Penguin Lessons takes on a life form of its own. Our friendly penguin, now the central feature of the film, follows Steve Coogan and refuses to go away. Much to the annoyance and embarrassment of Coogan, the penguin now decides to observe Coogan's every day activities. He joins him for breakfast, wandering hither and thither, waddling from side to side in quite the cutest fashion. Now we learn that Coogan's character was married but had lost his daughter in a tragic accident. 

Then Tom Michell, our highly respected English teacher, befriends a mother and daughter Vivian El Jaber aka Maria and Alfonsia Carrocio Sofia. Innocently minding her own business, the daughter is snatched and kidnapped by the Argentine military junta. Coogan looks on helplessly and the action moves back to our friendly penguin who becomes increasingly like a metaphor for the film itself; interested in everything and inquisitive about the human race. 

Eventually Coogan, determined to rid himself of the penguin, wakes up to the sound of marching band and warlike music on the radio, and then decided to take him back to a penguin sanctuary. The sudden realisation that the newly named penguin Juan Salvado would now be confined to a cage for the rest of his life stirs an empathy in Coogan and his conscience is pricked sharply. Juan Salvado can stay and now proceeds to spend time listening to the Jonathan Price character and flirting with Maria and Sofia.The penguin now joins in with the boys playful exploits in the school classroom and wins the hearts of everybody.

But then one day, returning to his flat, Tom Michell finds, much to his horror, that Juan Salvado is dead and some of us were just devastated and mortified. Barely believing what had just happened, Coogan crouches down on the floor tearfully handling all of Juan Salvado's toys. Our lovable penguin, after one final swim in a pool, now lay prone on the veranda floor. It is one of the most heart breaking conclusions to any movie and if you're in the mood for a tear jerker and something gentle and inoffensive then the Penguin Lessons is definitely for you. Enjoy.