Review | The Penguin Lessons

Andrew Stone reviews The Penguin Lessons a Steve Coogan film that is both a charming character piece and an insight into the time of the repressive Argentinian military junta.

On one level this is a charming character piece in which disillusioned English teacher Tom Michell (a hangdog Steve Coogan) gradually comes to terms with grief thanks to the cute antics of a penguin that he rescues from an oil-slick. The motivation for this act of kindness is a cynical attempt to impress a beautiful woman, but his subsequent attempts to abandon and offload the penguin are frustrated and a bond is gradually formed between them.

So far, so Hollywood-by-numbers. But, as in the literature that Michell teaches, there is another level. This real-life memoir is set in Argentina in 1976, at the onset of the war waged against the left by the military junta known as the National Reorganization Process (PRN). In the years until its overthrow in 1983, it’s estimated that 30,000 people – overwhelmingly civilians – were killed or ‘disappeared’ by the regime. They were often snatched from the streets, homes or workplaces in broad daylight, the regime flaunting the impunity with which it felt it could act. 

It’s easy to imagine a fictionalised version of this story where Michell rides into the rescue in fearless White Saviour mode. And the plot does eventually lead him to an act of courage. But it’s a journey that begins with him being recruited to a private school precisely because he’s a ‘head down kind of guy’ that the headmaster assumes will not rock the boat. Initially he fulfills this role, and when he’s not doing a crossword in class or napping during rugby practice, he’s displaying his cynicism by teaching his charges about the many forms of sarcasm.

The penguin is part of his transformation, but so is the youthful idealism of the school cleaner Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio) and the proud dignity of her grandmother Maria (Vivian El Jaber). They teach him that fear in the face of violent oppression is understandable, but that resistance is still a moral imperative. Michell slowly realises that sometimes ‘the penguin needs to go in the pool’ to use one metaphor for challenging the rules. He begins to critique the literary canon, encourages students to use different tenses to describe ‘fascist brutes’, and uses the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Percy Shelley to remind them that ‘ye are many, they are few’. Meanwhile, the penguin patters around the classroom as an unorthodox teaching assistant. 

Meanwhile the hierarchies of the school staff are debated, the experience of poverty is portrayed sympathetically through Sofia’s family, and Maria joins the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the real-life movement of women who protested throughout the dictatorship and beyond for the disappeared.
Some critics have complained that there is a tonal mismatch between the cute penguin hook and the deadly serious backdrop of the junta’s repression. Personally I found the combination effective – with Michell gaining perspective and embracing humanity in the face of its antithesis. The brutality of the junta is displayed indirectly through menacing allusion, meaning that the film (which is a 12A) is suitable for younger audiences, but it doesn’t talk down to the audience and its message is surely one that is as relevant as ever.