The Cove

I was planning a trip to Japan for Christmas until I saw this documentary, whereupon I started considering other options. This movie makes the fishermen there seem more callous than robots working at a welfare counter. No matter how angry the rest of the world is, the Japanese will not budge when it comes to their fishing policy, which is basically, don't kill the big whales but kill the little ones (dolphins are whales).


You never know what's factual and what isn't in film making, primarily because you can edit anything for your own purpose. But what's portrayed in this documentary is a very deliquent Japanese fishing industry performing a dolphin holocaust in Taiji, and no matter how many countries condemn it, no matter how many babies are born deformed from mercury poisoning, no matter how loud the dolphins cry as they're harpooned, the fishermen keep on killing. Money is a seductive beast.

The fact is, the majority of the Japanese public is unaware of what is happening in Taiji. The ones who do know are 'just doing their jobs' or defending their culture. But make no mistake, this film pulls no punches. It shows the fishermen in action, ignorant and numb to blood. That was the point of the documentary: to shock; to detail the grit rather than exist as a bumper sticker on some tree-hugger's car. After all, dolphins are the second most intelligent beings on the planet; it's about time they receive some compassion. If annually 23,000 chimpanzees were rounded up and slaughtered, Mankind would be on it like Donkey Kong.

The Cove brews sympathy for the dolphins, and proves that just because they live in the ocean, doesn't mean they're simple fish. These mammals communicate with each other, they surf waves for fun, they blow bubble rings, they are self-aware.

That's not the only thing this documentary shows, it also follows Ric O'Barry as he attempts to save them. As a young man, Ric captured and trained the dolphins who played Flipper in the popular TV show of the same name. As a result of Flipper, theme parks sprang up, importing dolphins and training them to perform in front of people. Today, you'd be hard-pressed to find a middle-class American who hasn't seen a dolphin do a flip. Now that I know that these animals are being exploited, it's going to be hard for me to see a theme park in the same light again. They aren't innocent family attractions.

It may sound like this film would be preachy, but it's not. It's highly suspenseful and reminds me of Oceans 11, but real. It's amazing how far the activists go to document the atrocities in Taiji. I can only hope that this documentary was translated into Japanese so the people over there see it too.

5/5