The Penguin Lessons
Most movies I watch these days are disappointing. The Penguin Lessons is a rare exception. Set in Argentina in the 1970s, it tells a story of human pathos worthy of an association with an animal – a penguin in this case. Animals are far more trustworthy, I find, and deserving of greater respect than human beings in the majority of instances. The struggle for power by humans inside nation states is directly responsible for the deaths and damage done to millions of people. Argentina, back in the 1970s was in the grip of a fascist regime following the collapse of the Peronist government. Hyper inflation was rife and a police state existed, with anyone suspected of dissent being disappeared by bad men employed by the regime.
Learning From Those Thought Lesser, Like A Penguin
WTF does a penguin have to do with political and civil machinations and unrest on the streets of Buenos Aries? Surprisingly, this flightless bird provides the perfect juxtaposition via its travails alongside an English private school teacher named Tom Mitchell. Juan Salvador, the penguin, is rescued from an oil slick on the beach in Uruguay by Tom the teacher. Juan the penguin ends up being secreted back into Argentina and the boarding school where Tom works. Why? A number of circumstantial factors combine to cause this unlikely association between the two.
Tom’s Penguin Lessons Pierce The Heart
Tom is presented, in the movie, as a fairly jaded character with little innate idealism and, therefore, the penguin situation is inadvertent. He is not trying to save the planet or anyone else. Tom is out for himself and what he can get from life, it seems. He is injected into a South American story of authoritarianism preying upon the locals with little feeling for the injustices occurring around him. The school cleaner’s niece is taken by the ‘gestapo’ like secret police and disappeared. Tom is more worried about his penguin being discovered by the English headmaster, who is a throwback to the Victorian era. Where Tom is laid back, St George’s college head is relentlessly anal. Juan Salvador is, of course, the most natural character in the whole story and he inspires others around him. The contrast with human beings having to impress figures of authority in their daily lives is delicious. The unlikely hero of this story inspires all and sundry about him.
Trump Regime Detaining Americans
I thought that the timing of the movie release of The Penguin Lessons was apt considering the Trump regime in the United States is grabbing folk off the street there, right now. ICE agents wearing masks are snatching academics and students to detain them for dissent. Their dissent being expressing contrary views about the war in Gaza, where the Israeli forces have killed some 50, 000 Palestinians. The Trump regime has made it effectively illegal to hold any views on this matter which go against their foreign policies. The US has become a fascist police state, where the rule of law has been coerced by Presidential executive orders and not Congress. This is, of course, illegal and the courts are disputing and pausing the Trump actions, which seek to deport all those they deem as unwanted in America. Some of these detained people have green cards or are citizens of the US.
The Movie
“Starring two-time Oscar nominee Steve Coogan (Philomena), this poignant dramedy from Oscar-nominated director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) explores an Englishman’s personal and political awakening after he adopts a penguin during a cataclysmic period in Argentine history. Based on the memoir and true story of a disillusioned Englishman who went to work in a school in Argentina in 1976, Tom (Coogan), expecting an easy ride, discovers a divided nation and a class of unteachable students. However, after he rescues a penguin from an oil-slicked beach, his life is turned upside-down.”
“Donald Trump’s regime in America is breaking the law on an industrial scale. There are more than 200 legal actions currently taken out against the Trump administration by aggrieved parties in the United States. Thus, fighting the normalization of Trump is an issue on this basis. People get used to the outrage and are deadened in some way to the gross injustices. However, the behaviour of ICE takes the cake in the outrage stakes in their total disregard for judicial due process. The snatching of Americans off the streets by masked men bearing no identification or documentation and detaining them for weeks and months is abhorrent in the extreme.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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