Movie Review: The Cove

First off, I have to say how glad I am that this documentary was made. It starts off a lot like "Man on Wire": with a rather illegal yet groundbreaking mission. There's James Bond night vision, people crammed into a van with cameras, and walkie-takies checking everyone's position asking how many cars are tailing them ("the Japanese mafia?"). All for one cause: to save a throng of dolphins.
The first person we meet is Rick O'Berry. Any time he enters the town of Taiji, Japan, he must be incognito, wearing a face mask like nurses wear and a wide hat. He even hunches over when he drives a car to keep his identity or else "they'd kill me if they could."He's referring to the chief of police in Taiji.
Dear Rick, once a dolphin trainer himself, has a history of getting arrested multiple times a year for attempting to free dolphins in captivity (and succeeding). His actions are rather simple: take a pair of scissors and cut a whole into the damn fence. I burst out laughing the first time I saw footage of him in a scuba suit with sheers snipping into an underwater chain link fence, purely because it was so joyful to see him in such an act of bravery, outsmarting the bad guys. It's a rush.
Rick tells us about why he's devoted his life to saving the dolphins--because surely someone can't just be born with this destiny. There has to be a solid reason for this madness he causes (or rather, tries to put a stop to). And it all boils down to his Hollywood days of training a dolphin named Kathy for the TV series, Flipper. Almost all dolphins in captivity are young females because they look the part. For ten years he helped build up the industry of show casing these animals, whales included. Until a pivotal event happened. "Dolphins breathe consciously," he tells us. "Every breath is a conscious effort. Kathy was severely depressed, I could feel it. Then, one day, she swam up into my arms, took a breath, and didn't take another. She committed suicide." The next morning, Rick went to a seaquariam and freed a dolphin from captivity and got arrested.
That was the minute I decided it was okay to cry. Who'd ever heard of such a thing? A British scientist goes on to explain how a dolphins are capable of doing the things they do. And he says, "The trainers communicate to the dolphins with their hands. In human form, it's Sign Language. But dolphins don't have hands, so it's one-way. This is a plain example of how incredibly intelligent these creatures are. It's extraordinary."
Enter Mandy and Tom. They're a married couple whose passion is freestyle scuba diving, which is essentially scuba diving on one breath of air. Mandy and Tom also have a passion for dolphins and whales because they've swum with them and understand them as animals. They were both recruited to help Rick and his team expose the cove of Taiji during the kill-fest.
Another man on board is an Australian surfer, who is the responsible for Hayden Pennetiare's display at the Taiji cove in 2007. He, Hayden, and five others swam out on surf boards into the cove, held hands, and refused to move from the killing spot--till the fishers started threatening them with the harpoons, jabbing at them, and yelling violently. This is where Hayden earns my respect because the girl, who was about 18 at the time, fought till she couldn't fight anymore, stumbling onto the shore in hysterics because she couldn't save a baby dolphin. All six surfers were arrested and banned from ever returning to Taiji.
Rick talks about the fisherman and their ignorance, and we see it first hand. They taunt the Westerners who venture to the cove to try and take pictures to expose the evil that happens--and so far, a lot of Westerners (photographers, journalists, activists) have battled with them on shore. One time, when Rick was there, one man in particular was so out of line that, "he wanted me to punch him. He was taunting me, and man, I would've socked him over the railing." I have to say, personally, that I was fairly surprised to see such behavior from the Japanese fisherman. I've been to Japan and they're not like that, not at all. Maybe it's a regional thing, but they are not ignorant or aggressive or obnoxious like these men were.
The method of killing is rather interesting yet irritating. It's too easy. I never would've known dolphins were so very sensitive to sound had I not seen this film (I only knew a little about it). Sound is the reason that droves of dolphins died when Sea World first opened. The tanks they were being kept in were so loud and terrible that it stressed them out, made them sick, and they died. It's a similar method at the cove: there's a long metal bar on the side of the boats that are whacked, creating a loud clanging, a wall of sound, and immediately the dolphins flock to the inner cove to be kept in a large net overnight and killed the next morning. It's too easy.
I must say, throughout the documentation of the crew's mission to film up-close what happens at the cove (building cameras in disguise and planting an underwater camera at night), the most satisfying moment comes at the very end. I won't give that part away. You have to check it out yourself. But I will say I was so shell-shocked I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Thank God I don't have roommates or I would have been pretty embarrassed by the look on my face.
The film itself is not about animal cruelty (MOM), it's about restoring the way dolphins need to be treated. So instead of dismissing the matter just because dolphins died (MOM), watch it because of how much effort is being put into trying to rectify it all.