HuffPost Review: The Cove

If The Cove were a fiction film, it would be derided as far-fetched, contrived, even hard to swallow.

The fact that it's nonfiction doesn't make it any easier to believe -- if only because the footage is so horrifying, the facts so disturbing. It's not that you can't believe it, but that you don't want to.

Which is what makes The Cove one of the most important and heroic pieces of work I've ever seen. It's not just that these filmmakers expose vicious, inhumane and ecologically dangerous practices, apparently sanctioned and covered up by the Japanese government and its media. But the filmmakers have done it while risking their freedom -- even their lives -- for the cause.

The result is the year's most exciting film -- as well as a documentary that can't help but leave you upset and outraged.

The film is directed by photographer Louis Psihoyos, a magazine photographer and documentarian whose head was turned around when he met dolphin activist Ric O'Barry. Once one of the leading dolphin trainers in the world -- his final job being TV's "Flipper" -- O'Barry flipped to the other side when he realized how miserable (he would say suicidal) the captive dolphins were. He became a vigilante about freeing dolphins that were part of marine-park dolphin shows (hello, Seaworld?) and swim-with-the-dolphins parks.

O'Barry, in turn, told Psihoyos about Taiji, Japan, which is secretly the world's largest unofficial abbatoir -- slaughterhouse, in other words -- for dolphins. Though the Japanese government protects the locals who undertake this barbaric practice, O'Barry knew that this one place accounted for the senseless killing of tens of thousands of dolphins each year.

Essentially, each year, as dolphins' migratory pattern takes them past Taiji, fisherman herd the dolphins into an inlet, which they then wall off with netting. The most desirable of the dolphins -- the bottlenoses that resemble Flipper -- are captured and sold to marine parks, aquariums and dolphinariums around the world. The rest are herded into a cove and slaughtered for meat -- despite the fact that they contain a high level of mercury.

But the government helps keep this practice secret by preventing anyone from witnessing this. While you can watch from land as the best dolphins are picked out of the first culling, the cove itself where the slaughter takes place is hidden by hills -- and the national park of which it is part is guarded and patrolled. Anyone caught trying to see what's really going on is arrested.

So Psihoyos recruited a mixed bag of specialists/commandos to make his own video assault on the cove. And that's the story of The Cove -- how, against the odds, these filmmakers captured on high-def video horrifying footage that the Japanese government does not want you to see.

At the same time, Psihoyos uses the film to clearly examine the politics of the International Whaling Commission, a seeming regulatory agency for the slaughter of cetaceans (of which both whales and dolphins are examples) that serves as an ineffective puppet for Japan and other whaling nations. He lays out the strings Japan pulls to get countries that have no fishing industry to vote their way through large infusions of cash.

In writing about this film, it's hard not to simply go off on a rant about Japan, which is not just the enabler but the muscle behind the efforts to keep this program secret. Psihoyos points out the sordid history of Minamata, the town where a powerful Japanese corporation, Chisso, routinely dumped mercury into the local waters, which accumulated in local seafood, poisoning the locals and leading to thousands of deaths and children born with deformities. The government fought efforts to publicize the problem, then to hold Chisso to account, for years, until the international outcry was too great.

So it is with The Cove, a movie that can't help but rouse audiences to action. Each raised voice, it would seem, is one more dagger in the heart of Japan's effort to cover up this aquatic atrocity. How much face can one country lose before it changes policies that sanction this kind of cruel criminal activity?

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Comments

[buvery]

Louie Psihoyos is better introduced as an affiliate of controversial direct action group, Sea Shepherd, and a Japanese Buddhist cult, Soka Gakkai. This piece of film is a clear crystal of Eco-vandalism and cultural unilateralism.

Americans like beef, but American beef is not screened for mad-cow disease, and there is a proven risk that a certain population will contract the fatal disease by eating unchecked beef. Some other don't eat beef. And either way, the decision should be made by the individual Americans.

Dolphins are cows of the sea, and there is nothing wrong in eating them as long as the processing of the meat is hygienic, and the product is sustainable.

The film is factually wrong: the national quota of dolphins in Japan is 21,000 annually, and Taiji consumes about a little short of 3,000 of it. It is not tens of thousands. Secondly, impact of "international outcry" against Chisso Minamata did not cahnge the course of the mercury poisoning incident. It was the local patients and fishermen, those heroes in Minamata who fought against Chisso for years on end in court. Based on these two factual errors, I can say that the film maker is living in his imaginary world without real exposure to Japanese society or its modern history, let alone decent communication skills in Japanese language.

If you love your dolphin, keep your dolphin and don't eat it. But never break laws or connive those illegal activities such as sabotaging the fishermen's facility.

[Maurina]

@buvery: I understand your points, but I must correct you on one thing: The meat culled from bottlenosed dolphins is toxic. All of it. The mercury levels in ALL dolphins are elevated to the point of being poisonous to humans. Dolphins are near the top of the ocean's food chain, so they consume large quantities of smaller fish, and by doing so they build up mercury levels.

I do think that the US should test ALL cows for Mad Cow disease, but it is an extremely rare condition. You really can't compare mercury toxicity in dolphins to Mad Cow in bovines.

Also, did you see the movie? I did not yet, but I think that many of the factual errors that keep cropping up in the reviews are made by the reviewers and not the film. Again, once I see the film I'll know for sure.

One last interesting tidbit: The country that tests all its cow meat for Mad Cow? Japan.

[torrange]

buvery - I have actually seen the movie and following my screening, I was afraid that we would be hearing numerous reactions like yours.

The dolphins that are being slaughtered are then packaged and sold as whale meat. Rick O'Barry actually talked with people in Tokyo and no one claimed to eat dolphin, there reaction was similar to how you would expect an American to react - disbelief and revulsion.

Yes we do eat a lot of beef and poultry - but we raise these animals in a sustainable way. The Japanese are killing the dolphins because they say, publicly, that the numbers of fish they are pulling out of the ocean are decreasing and they blame the dolphins, not over fishing. They are covertly using the dolphins to supplement the lack of whale meat due to IWC sanctions.

[Tex1969]

What exactly are your credentials for arguing in support of this practice?

I'll have to go with the real scientists who supported the making of this film
not an armchair one.

[OceanZombie]

buvery, sorry, but you are truly way off on your lines of thinking.
Dolphins and Whales are highly intellgent sea mammals, and are NOTHING like cows, and should not be labeled as cows of the sea!!! They should be protected!!!! All fisherman's facilities where inhumane slaughterings take place should be sabatoged!! There is NO way to rationalize this ancient tradition. It is SICK!! You are way outnumbered on this battle!!!

[Jeff Roth]

Event: NYC theatrical release of The Cove

"The Cove out in theaters this friday!"

What: Opening

Host: Save Japan http://www.facebook.com/l/;Dolphins.org

Start Time: Today, July 27 at 6:00pm
End Time: Today, July 27 at 9:00pm

Where: Angelika Film Center or Beekman Theater (1271 2nd Avenue Between 66th & 67th St.)

[Jeff Roth]

Event: Los Angeles theatrical release of The Cove

"The Cove Special Screening with Captain Watson,Isabel Lucas, Kelly Slater and Q'orianka Kilcher."

What: Opening

Host: Save Japan http://www.facebook.com/l/;Dolphins.org

Start Time: Friday, July 31 at 7:00pm
End Time: Friday, July 31 at 9:00pm

Where: The Landmark Theatre