12.07.2009

The Cove (2009) - Documentary

Welcome to Taiji, Japan. "The little town with the really big secret".
Immediately, The Cove siphons you in with an articulate visual language blending stock video, interviews, CGI, aerial footage and hidden cameras. Dark vignettes of infra-red lit stealth divers rushing and creeping, haunt the opening sequence.
An establishing chapter quotes the statistic of 23,000 dolphins killed each year before the film zeroes in on the personal story of Ric O’Barry, dolphin trainer turned anti-captivity activist. We are briefly informed of the who, what and whys' as the film uncovers a deeper conspiracy within the food industry.
Next is ushered in the development of the films main focus; The formation of a team whose mission it is to infiltrate and expose the truth of what goes on in 'the cove', Taiji. The apparent slaughtering ground for thousands of dolphins each year. What follows is a tense game of cat and mouse as the team scheme to outwit the local authorities and fishermen to get the footage they want.
The Cove is a fine piece of sensationalist documentary making, it is tense and totally entertaining. People will love this film. However, upon analysis the film can seem a little unfocused. Are we dismayed that another country kills animals to eat? Are we appalled that they are risking poisoning the population with mercury? Are we impressed by the guerrilla style film-making on display? Do we just want to see the guy who trained Flipper play Rambo? I think the inclusion of all of these things attempt to distract from the question; What is the real difference between them and us?
I'm a skeptic by nature and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm also no stranger to the documentary form and it's enigmatic power to manipulate and convince. By this point I am acutely sensitive to the craft of documentary being exploited by environmentalists and politicians and find it a bit offensive. The Cove skirts dangerously close to this line and I'm worried the message falls apart under the weight of cheap thrills. It's is an honest film but as the credits roll and the images of blood-red water saturate your brain you can't help but feel the film reduces to very little. An educational exercise jazzed up with life stories and campaign footage. A film about film-making. The revelation that they kill lots of dolphins is made in the first minute, with the rest of the film biding time before they show us it. The dramatic sections in the cove compromise the poignancy of the film in order to make it totally accessible to a wide audience.
What remains here is a powerful and entertaining film that will expose a large audience to an uncomfortable truth and that is surely a positive thing.
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In conclusion, I have one word to throw at The Cove and it's soon-to-be-shocked-and-dismayed audience. Cows. Dolphin slaughter statistics pale in comparison to that of cows and although that's another film entirely, I shudder at the thought of some latte slurping yuppies getting righteous about dolphin slaughter as they tuck into their Sunday steak. Better again, Darfur? Burma? You get my point. I don't want to detract from the message of this film(even though the whole thing smacks of redundancy), I just wish we could all be nice to animals so we could focus our efforts on looking after us humans.
Merry Christmas - Miss Toronto 2009.

11 comments:

Niki Diamonds said...

How about I just con you into eating bacon at my photography opening.. wait... Done and DONE!

Chandles said...

or I con you into chicken noodle soup. also done.

Chandles said...

into eating the soup that is, not that I con you so well you become soup. shut up.

the coelacanth said...

i watched this last night and while i mostly agree with what you are saying, i think you're giving the filmmakers too little credit for their shrewdness - i got the sense that they were aware that this was but a small symbol of man's capacity for cruelty, and lack of care for the environment, and to focus simply on the slaughter and not expand their critical gaze to cows or human genocide only served to strengthen the argument, not weaken it. i think the intelligent viewer will draw these parallels on their own, as you did, and had the filmmakers grasped at all these causes it would have made the film confusing, an only then redundant. i agree, people are going to love this, people are going to get righteous, and whether or not that is coupled with hypocrisy remains to be seen. the film did have a bit of an a-team/mission impossible vibe going on, which i dug. and you certainly can't argue the incredible suspense the film builds. and you cannot deny the impact of the final shots of the slaughter. great film, great review, lots to ponder here...

Britarded said...

Yeah. It's not that I thought it should've expanded on other issues within the film, I just thought the very way they are SO disgusted by what is essentially the slaughter of animals a bit weird, culturally speaking. They should have addressed their own stances a bit because I later read the crew were all vegans and stuff and I think they were afraid it would make them look like radical hippies or something, so skipped over it. For me that left a big hole with a lot of questions in it. I imagine some hindu a-team film crew going into an abbatoir in hamilton could be potentially as effecting but people wouldn't want to see that, too close to home. They would have to question themselves instead we have suburban white people snearing at the japanese across the water. And that bugs me.
Great film, sketchy politics attached to it. And we both know the wrong people are gonna get righteous. I enjoyed watching it but I really think it's fatally flawed. Just my opinion, but it's right.

Britarded said...

Still, it gets a 7/10 and I would recommend watching it, so.... I'm totally conflicted.

Britarded said...

Plus, isn't it a bit tacky to turn a documentary on animal slaughter into what is essentially an espionage thriller? Man this film has bugged me.

the coelacanth said...

haha i can tell.

and oh god, i would absolutely LOVE to see a hindu a-team go to a hamilton abbatoir. now THAT would be a doc i'd watch...

La Sporgenza said...

I know that this is bit of a cop-out, but is anyone else getting a little tired of the endless self-flagellation that eco-docs seem to heap upon us this days? As good as this sounds.... I think I'll take a pass, buy a Hummer, move to Texas and become a rootin, tootin' ranch hand instead.

These days I struggle with a combination of eco-guilt and honkpocrisy overload. I'm gonna watch Mad Max, Return to the Hyperbowl now.

I'll bet dolphin tastes like chicken too.

the coelacanth said...

i feel yer pain, sporge - i've given a pass to the last half dozen eco/agri-docs (inconvenient truth, 11th hour, food inc, end of the line, etc), but was intrigued by this (as i think you might be), because i'd read that it plays out much more like a thriller than a preachy doc. it delivers on the goods, and i felt absolutely no guilt at the end (wait....yes, i just checked, i still have a pulse). it really is a superbly crafted thriller.

hahaha hyperbowl.

Britarded said...

I still think about this film and boil! I just read this, a much better written article than my post here, but look:

"Imagine if a group of devout Hindus snuck into a Chicago Jurgis Rudkus-style slaughterhouse and pieced together a documentary about how Americans were a bunch of savages for murdering holy cows"

"Brendan O’Neill of Spiked goes so far as to describe the film as racist"


dated January 2010 btw, and raised the exact points I did here. The Cove has won many awards but the whale slaughter ban it inspired has now relapsed and the water is red once more. I conclude, The Cove is one fat colonic nugget and far from a fine documentary it's a bit of a perversion of the form. Bring on the backlash.