The Cove
2009, USA. Certificate: 12A. 92mins. Director: Louie Psihoyos
Richard O’Barry worked as a dolphin trainer and catcher in Miami in the 60s. He famously trained the dolphins in the popular U.S. TV series flipper and did well out of it’s success. When “Kathy”, one of the trained dolphins, “committed suicide”, as O’Barry puts it, right in front of him, - by drowning her self, the penny dropped. O’Barry had a realisation that these highly intelligent, sensitive, ocean dwelling creatures should not be bought, sold, profited from, treated as toys for human enjoyment and kept imprisoned. Since then he has committed his life to high lighting the cruel trade in captive dolphins, and resorting to direct action to dismantle a dubious business he played a major part in creating.
In The Cove O’Barry is the pivotal character that provides the back story and passionate driving force of this film.
Director Louie Psihoyos gathers a self described “Oceans Eleven” of marine experts, special FX nerds, film technicians and free divers to infiltrate a hidden and protected cove in Taiji , Japan, the hub of the marine park dolphin trade with a sinister secret.
With more hi-tec kit than and equally obvious as a unit of US marines Louie’s team blag there way through customs and set up camp in a Taiji hotel where they plan the covert visual and audio recording of this regular sea mammal massacre. It’s been O’Barry’s mission to expose the goings on here for some time, he knew he had to do it right and only had one chance. The Taiji fishermen ‘mafia’ know him, fear publicity and they guard their cove aggressively. The fishermen, in league with local officials, spy on, film and violently harass the outsiders. They do this hoping to get a reaction, some form of criminal offence on camera that will ban an individual from the area, a technique used here successfully up until now to keep the marine parks stocked with fresh entertainers and Japanese shops stocked with mercury contaminated, highly priced, fraudulent whale meat. Japan’s national pride is entwined it seems with whaling in a similar way the upper classes in England hunt foxes and Americans carry guns. Later in the film we are shown an international conference on whaling, here Japanese officials are exposed bribing small impoverished countries to lobby for the return to commercial whaling.
The Cove is a skillfully made documentary film, informative, entertaining and moving, it plays on our love of thrilling suspense block busters like James Bond. The “Mission Impossible” style music over the brilliantly shot and edited “night sight” imaging of the Enviro- A-team going about their business raises the tension and keeps us hooked. This film adds to the growing family of environmental films hitting the cinemas, this one is by no means the runt. Cynics, I’m sure, would question O’Barry’s motive to make this film now, environmentalism is in fashion, “there’s gold in them Hollywood hills”! At this time in his life when perhaps the money from the “Flipper” series isn’t flowing like it was? Whether O’Barry needs a few quid? like us all, or not he comes across as genuine and his cause more than worthy and understandable at a critical time in the earths history. As he says “if he can’t stop what is going on in this Cove in Taiji there isn’t a hope for the wider world”. This I feel is his true motive, magnifying a micro-cosom of man’s down fall, the way we can treat such angelic, intelligent fellow mammals and the wider planet in the name of progress and civilization.