An Adélie penguin in Antarctic Edge: 70° South (First Run Features)

The realities of climate change are painful; the reality of studying it is painstaking. That work, chronicled in Antarctic Edge: 70° South, focuses on a group of scientists making an annual trip to what has been called “the land of the gods” to study what man has done to Earth.

One of their primary tasks is to get a sense of the dwindling Adélie penguin population. The species is on the forefront in the global warming war: what happens to it can be used to predict what will happen to other mammals. Also useful in such calculations are krill. The small crustaceans are a necessary variable to balance the sea’s carbon budget, and so the research team attempts to gather samples of krill from different depths of the ocean. That requires expensive machinery that often malfunctions, something the scientists accept with wry humor (they try to ward off bad luck with superstitious rituals involving a coconut bra).

The good nature of the men and women riding the Gould, an icebreaker, is one of the draws of this documentary. They take some delight in being at what they call “summer camp for nerds,” and they playfully encourage each other: “Let’s go make some sweet, sweet science.” At the same time, it’s clear that science is not for sissies. One marine biologist relates an incident that caused him to lose a finger, while another describes the toll extended expeditions can take on families.

Overall, filmmaker Dena Seidel does a commendable job making some heavy facts and figures digestible to laymen. At the beginning, there is randomness to some of the imagery, and a few graphics—including one that shows a map of the world moving from cool to warm colors—are left unexplained. But the ship steadies halfway through, as computer animation is skillfully used to illustrate some of the more complex (and impossible to photograph) concepts.

Though climate change is a fraught issue, with President Obama recently making headlines for going off on a rant about it, the film never dips into histrionics. However, it doesn’t have the benefit of something like an Oscar-winning rock ballad, which helped to promote Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Unfortunately, that means this level-headed film may stay below the radar: there’s nothing very sexy about the slow grind of gathering and processing data. Luckily, that doesn’t stop these men and women from trying to accurately describe, and prepare for, our gathering crisis.