"The Cove"

     Taiji, a fishing hot-spot located in Japan, has been named “the little town with a big secret.”  Each year 23,000 dolphins are captured and brutally slaughtered while unaware townspeople go about their daily lives.  This was all planned to change when “The Cove” (directed by Louis Psihoyos, 2009) was filmed and released.  A team of filmmakers, ecologists, divers, and activists sought to uncover the hidden cruelty, proving they would do whatever it would take to begin and carry out a major ecological movement.

            Richard O’Barry, the crews’ leader, trained dolphins for thirty years in captivity.  His main project was to find and train the five dolphins used in “Flipper.”  After witnessing the ongoing stress and eventual suicide of “Flipper’s” leading dolphin Kathy, he felt responsible to tear down the industry he had spent his whole life creating.  In “The Cove,” O’Barry and his team uncover a hidden cove used to hide dolphins that that no others had ever before captured on film.  The documentary thoroughly explores the reasoning behind the demand of dolphins, the hunters’ methods and secret marketplaces, and the ongoing arguments of captivity versus the wild.

            “The Cove” is shot from the point-of-view of the animal rights activist, and Psihoyos does a great job in showing the opposing sides’ opinions on the matter of dolphin slaughtering.  Townspeople, government officials, and the fishermen themselves were all interviewed or secretly captured giving their side of the story, creating a well-balanced documentary.  However, from the get-go you see this documentary isn’t your typical form of documentary, which creates a very entertaining twist.  The film takes on the role of storyteller, setting out to display a serious injustice in the form of a thriller and suspense.  Effective imagery is created using photographs, old, new, and secret footage, and interviews with the team, IWC (International Whaling Committee) and fishermen.  

 The most difficult obstacle in creating the film was finding a way into the cove without getting caught.  This is where the modern technology really made the movie.  The crew had footage of the town, fishermen, boats, and of course, the dolphins, but they still needed that one money-shot.  In the most suspenseful scene of the film, the team sets out in the middle of the night to install both cameras hidden in rocks and microphones hidden underwater.  All of the installation was shot using night-vision and heat-sensitive cameras that vividly displayed the silhouettes of each person, making it difficult to decipher the “good” guys from the “bad” guys and creating a spy-like atmosphere. This mission became necessary because the rock cameras would be able to shoot from every angle possible inside of the cove.  The filmmakers accomplished what no one else had done before, and the use of technology aided in the success of the film.

            Though the technology played a large role in making “The Cove” an emotionally powerful documentary, the risk the team took to create the film and show the issue with as little subjectivity as possible stands out the most.  O’Barry began with an issue much too large to fight alone and with too many questions to keep up with.  The documentary served as a tool to figure out how to bring light to this serious ecological problem.  The more they filmed, the more educated they became, adding to the drive to uncover the issue into further detail.  He wasn’t afraid to show the world exactly what he found, in hopes it would spark interests, and this courage adds to the impressive detail in the film.

            In the final scene, O’Barry strapped a television to his chest with graphic footage from the cove playing, and he pranced around an IWC meeting in protest.  He was quickly shot-down, but he should be proud to say he helped create and lead an all-inclusive, well-researched, technologically savvy, entertaining and emotionally challenging documentary that is only the start to a long battle for animal rights and ecological issues.