Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Richard O'Barry, Louie Psihoyos, Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, Kirk Krack, David Rastovich, Scott Baker, Brooke Aitken, Charles Hambleton, Paul Watson
Written by Mark Monroe
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13
Runtime 90 minutes
Directed by Louie Psihoyos
When is a nature documentary not a nature documentary? Well, possibly when it's Vanishing of the Bees (less nature documentary, more lesson in boredom) but almost certainly when it's the powerful and moving The Cove which mixes real, incredibly tense action with its powerful ecological and moral lessons.
In the 1960s, Richard O'Barry was America's, if not the world's, leading dolphin trainer. He worked on the Flipper TV show, lived that honeymoon dream — swimming with dolphins — on a daily basis, and all was bright and sunny and joyous. And then one of the dolphins playing Flipper died. At this point, O'Barry started to question the morality of taking an incredibly intelligent creature and abusing it for entertainment. That was the start of a shift in career, as the dolphin trainer turned dolphin activist: O'Barry is now a highly vocal protester against dolphin captivity. After O'Barry was kicked off a marine conference panel, director Louie Psihoyos was intrigued to find out why. O'Barry explained that he had been planning to discuss the grisly secret of a small Japanese fishing town called Taiji and the event sponsors —Seaworld — had ensured he was removed...
According to O'Barry, some 23,000 dolphins are rounded up every year off the coast of Taiji and forced into a small cove. The "pick" of the dolphins are selected by assembled dolphin trainers and shipped off to zoos, safari parks and Seaworld-esque shows. The rest are slaughtered and the meat — the mercury-infested meat, in fact — is then given away to school meal programs. And all of this takes place in the middle of a Japanese national park, just down from the Whale Museum and in a town that purports to revere dolphins.
Psihoyos decided the world needed to know this story but when he tried to film it legally, the town closed ranks. That's the entire town, incredibly, from the fishermen directly involved to the local police, who constantly question O'Barry about his presence and tail Psihoyos everywhere he goes. Prevented from filming ("The mayor told me that I could get hurt or killed by getting too close" explains the director), Psihoyos finds alternative methods: not the Navy Seal team O'Barry suggested, but a mix of free divers, surfers and technology experts who risk arrest / violence in order to plant hidden cameras and recording equipment all over the cove, in sweaty-palmed scenes that give The Cove a Bourne-like sense of action.
As exciting as these scenes are, remarkably they don't detract completely from the film's message. Instead, they could help bring this important and disturbing topic to a wider audience than would normally see this sort of documentary. Exciting, powerful, disturbing. I've not declared many films "must sees" this year but this definitely falls into that category.