The Cove
by Louie Psihoyos
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Actor: Hardy Jones, Joji Morishita, Louie Psihoyos, Michael Illiff, Richard O'BarryDirector: Louie Psihoyos
Brand: Lions Gate
Producer: Charles Hambleton
Cinematographer: Brook Aitken
Producer: Fisher Stevens
Producer: Jim Clark
Producer: Olivia Ahnemann
Producer: Paula DuPré Pesmen
Writer: Mark Monroe
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 92 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-12-08
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of The Cove
DVD Review: a must-see documentary
Summary: 4 Stars
****1/2
Ric O'Barry may be the world's premier lover of dolphins, but the one place you'll never find him at is Sea World taking in a show. That's because he'd much rather expend his time and energy in freeing those marvelous creatures from captivity - an act for which he has been arrested numerous times and which has earned him the status of persona non grata in many quarters. Yet, although O'Barry may be an "environmental whacko" (maybe even a "dangerous criminal") in the eyes of some, to others - and certainly to the dolphins whose freedom and well-being he champions - O'Barry is a real life hero.
The remarkable, consciousness-raising documentary "The Cove" chronicles O'Barry's efforts to make a clandestine video record of a dolphin slaughter that takes place regularly in a secluded cove in Taiji, Japan, far away from public view. Here thousands of dolphins are trapped, some to be captured and sold to dolphinariums, but most to be brutally massacred for food. To get his video, O'Barry enlisted the aid of various friends and colleagues, who formed a kind of "Ocean's Eleven" special ops team of high-tech video and sound engineers, to pull off the scheme.
Why, some might wonder, should animals like dolphins and whales be protected from such ritualized slaughter when other mammals like cows and sheep are not? O'Barry would posit that it is because, alone among all God's creatures, the dolphin has a uniquely symbiotic relationship with mankind, as evidenced by tales told from time immemorial of dolphins rescuing humans stranded at sea and even of protecting them from underwater predators such as sharks. And scientists have certainly shown that the dolphin is second to none among the animal kingdom when it comes to "intelligence" and the ability to communicate with one another. O'Barry goes so far as to argue that dolphins are so self-aware that they even have a sense of their own mortality.
The movie points out the irony that this obsession with training dolphins and whales for show purposes began in the early 1960s with the immense popularity of the TV series "Flipper." In other words, it was people's sudden intense interest in and love for the dolphin that became largely responsible for the desperate plight they're in today. O'Barry acknowledges his own culpability in this regard since it was he himself who helped to capture and train the five female dolphins that were used in the show. In the time since that program aired, dolphin-capturing has become a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry, primarily in Japan, and has resulted in "the largest slaughter of dolphins on the planet" (to the tune of 23,000 per year in that country alone). But after seeing the harm inflicted on these magnificent creatures by their captivity - dolphins normally swim 40 miles a day in the open waters - O'Barry's views quickly evolved to the point where he became a hardcore activist tirelessly fighting for their liberation. As he himself states, "I spent ten years building that industry up, and I spent the last thirty-five years trying to tear it down." If nothing else, "The Cove" is a story of one man's search for personal redemption.
But "The Cove" is much more than simply an informative documentary designed to do good in the world. It possesses all the drama and suspense of a real-life cloak-and-dagger espionage thriller as we go along with the team as they sneak their video and audio equipment past the authorities and plant it where it will do the most good. The movie also has all the emotional pull of a classic David and Goliath story, though in this case, there are actually two Goliaths, one, the Japanese fishing industry that is green-lighting the slaughter, and, the other, the farcically impotent International Whaling Commission (an admittedly weaker giant) whose job it ostensibly is to see that the slaughter doesn't happen. Quite a bit of the movie's running time, in fact, is devoted to showing the rampant corruption of that organization, as we see Japan overtly bribing smaller countries for their votes.
"The Cove" is definitely hard to watch at times, and the slaughter scene itself is certainly not for the faint-of-heart. But it is something that cries out to be seen - and acted upon (the movie appropriately ends with contact information for all those interested in helping out the cause). And director Louie Psihoyos counterbalances the ugliness with gorgeous shots of dolphins swimming freely in the open ocean - objects of matchless grace and beauty in the natural world. Moreover, the visuals are richly complemented by a lyrical, haunting score by J. Ralph.
No matter your view on the environment, after seeing "The Cove," you will never be able to look at Flipper or Sea World in the same way again.
Description of The Cove
In a sleepy lagoon off the coast of Japan, behind a wall of barbed wire and "Keep Out? signs, lies a shocking secret. It is here, under cover of night, that the fishermen of Taiji engage in an unseen hunt for thousands of dolphins. The nature of the work is so horrifying, a few desperate men will stop at nothing to keep it hidden from the world. But when an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embark on a covert mission to penetrate the cove, they discover that the shocking atrocities they find there are just the tip of the iceberg.Bestsellers in DVD
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