Documentary Corner

Much like Bowling for Columbine, our featured film of last week, The Cove stands as a masterful example of a documentary with a message. A renowned critical darling, the film boasts countless awards, including the Academy Award for ‘Best Documentary Feature’. Despite being heavily one-sided, it is a near-perfect example of how to produce an informative, campaign-based documentary. While many films of a similar vein often end up incredibly dull and repetitive in their preachiness, The Cove keeps the viewer engaged, and has more than just dry facts to keep us hooked.

The documentary covers, in painful detail, the issue of dolphin drive hunting and whaling in Japan. More specifically, it focuses on an isolated cove in Taiji where every year thousands of dolphins are captured and either taken to be sold or slaughtered for meat. The main character, of sorts, is seen in Ric O’Barry who is famous for training the dolphins featured in the television series Flipper, but has become somewhat of an eco-warrior following a series of upsetting experiences I won’t spoil here. What gives this movie substance is the almost Oceans Eleven-esque feel of the narrative’s main driving force. Much of the film is dedicated to the crew’s efforts to covertly set up surveillance around the bay to record, for the first time, the slaughter of these dolphins.

An expert team is put together including an electronics professional from the Canadian Air Force and a Hollywood SFX artist who disguises the cameras. The crew is seen battling with intimidating and relentless Japanese fishermen who attempt to silence and scare them away. The editing, music, and camerawork all crescendo towards the final act in what is a perfectly crafted piece of suspenseful action storytelling – when we do eventually get to see the events of this cove, it’s not easy to watch. Other parts of the film go about explaining various aspects of dolphin and whale activism, with talking points ranging from mercury poisoning, captivity in SeaWorld, and the Minamata-Disease scandal of the 1960s.

The Cove holds a place as one of very few documentaries that have made me question myself and the things I believe and do. When I first saw the film as part of a showing with the Wimbledon Film Club, the audience was treated to a Q&A with a member of the Ocean Protection Society. One topic that came up during the discussion was the question of how, if someone is a meat-eater, could they oppose the killing of these dolphins? This question stuck with me then, and has done so to this day. As a meat eater myself, this film was genuinely quite emotional and challenging to watch; I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic, or indeed any aspects of animal welfare activism.