This summer, a lot of people in quite a few countries saw a modest French-made documentary about penguins. So many, in fact, that the movie, "La Marche de lfempereur," or "March of the Penguins," was recently named the second-highest-grossing documentary film ever, after "Fahrenheit 911." In many cities, it has run longer than big-budget blockbusters featuring celebrity actors.

Its makers probably thought they had crafted a simple nature film -- interesting, beautiful, dramatic, but hardly profound. The public, however, didn't respond simply. Like the blind men who each felt an elephant and "saw" something different in the exotic creature, people have brought their own preconceptions to "March of the Penguins" and seen all manner of human parallels in it. It has become a kind of mirror, showing us who we are now.

Of course, it is not actually about us at all. There isn't a human being in the entire thing. Set in Antarctica, it depicts the mating cycle of that harsh region's principal inhabitant: the emperor penguin. As fall approaches, the birds clamber out of the ocean and set off, in a single-file column several kilometers long, on a 112-km march to their breeding grounds. Once there, they pair off for the season, mate and produce eggs.