Based on a memoir of the same name, The Penguin Lessons takes place in 1976 Argentina where a miliary regime is in power following a coup. Tom Michell (Steve Coogan), a cynical Englishman, has arrived to teach English at an elite boy’s school. Since the school administration is determined to remain apolitical, and his students show little interest in his classes, his disillusionment only grows. When unrest in the city necessitates the school closing for a period, Tom takes a vacation to Uruguay.
There on the beach he sees a group of penguins covered with oil. Only one is alive, and he decides to rescue it, taking it back to his hotel to wash off the oil. The next day when he brings the penguin back to the ocean, the little animal won’t go in the water and instead follows him around. Despite several attempts to rid himself of the penguin, Tom realizes he is going to have to take him back to school. He names him Juan Salvador.
Animals are teachers in most cultures. They showed the earliest humans what foods to eat and how to build lasting homes. Today, they alert us to areas that have become too dangerously polluted to sustain life – like the ocean in this film where oil slicks threaten the lives of penguins, birds, and other sea creatures.
Folk tales, fables, teaching stories, children’s books, and movies like this one illustrate the lessons in animal behavior. Juan Salvador’s antics at the school – especially his swims in the pool – show the students how to live happily in the moment, no matter what is going on in the world around them. Although the school is definitely not normal penguin habitat, he moves through the halls and grounds with admirable curiosity.
But the real penguin lessons are what Tom, his students, the headmaster (Jonathan Pryce), and the cleaning lady (Vivian El Jaber) and her granddaughter Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocia) learn from caring for him. Tom rewards good students with the chance to feed the penguin, and soon the boys are taking a greater interest in their studies. The other adults begin confiding their feelings to the penguin, opening up in closed and dangerous times.
Juan Salvador brings out Tom’s dormant nurturing side and with it his sensitivity to what is happening in Argentina. When Sofia is arrested by the military regime and “disappears,” Tom at first feels helpless, just as he had felt when he encountered a bunch of oil-slicked penguins on the beach. But seeing her grandmother and other mothers of the disappeared gathered in the public square, demanding to know what has happened to their loved ones, he has a political awakening. If he can get a private school to accept and love a penguin in their midst, perhaps there is something he can do for Sofia.
There are many catalysts to political action and change. The Penguin Lessons shows how an animal can be the spark.