The Cove (waaaaa)

The Cove is one of the saddest and most graphic documentaries I've ever seen. The setting is Taiji, Japan, which is the location of the cove where dolphins are easily rounded up by Japanese fishermen and either sold to aquariums or swim-with-dolphins-type businesses around the world or slaughtered for consumption. (Did you know that on average a bottlenose dolphin - like Flipper- only costs $150,000? That did not seem that expensive to me and I wondered why Paris Hilton, the animal lover, has never owned a dolphin.) Apparently, at the aquarium in Taiji, you can watch dolphins perform and eat dolphin meat at the same time. The mission of the documentarians is to film the actual slaughter, which takes place in a smaller cove outside of view from any public place in order to cause public outrage and potentially shut down the operation by the local fishermen.

Although this is a compelling cause (who doesn't like dolphins, or wouldn't cringe at the sight of a dolphin being hacked at and struggling for air?), The Cove has a few problems. First, I found it difficult to connect to or even like the activists who are the focus of the documentary. At times, their intensity is too creepy. Other times, they are just silly. I was especially amused by this activist couple who loves to swim with dolphins and whales in the wild while wearing plastic tails (yes, as in a dolphin-looking tail is over their legs). Another activist told the story of a dolphin that "committed suicide in his arms" because the dolphin was tired of being in captivity (i.e. the dolphin stopped breathing on purpose). Second, I thought that the documentary misrepresented the issue a little bit as a "good guys vs. the Japanese" scenario. Obviously, there must be a diversity of opinion within Japan about this issue and its historical and economic underpinnings, but we never got any sense of it. Finally, the premise of the documentary is questionable (will videotaping this actually stop the slaughter?) and you end up wondering whether the insistence on filming the slaughter is more about sticking it to the local establishment that dislikes the western documentarians and their activists' entourage that have descended on their town. The fact is that everyone knows the dolphins get slaughtered and that the local fishermen are likely to continue to do so even after the documentary is released.

In the end, I am still deeply saddened by the sight of any dolphin being hurt and was moved by the documentary. (Yes, I'm a girl and love dolphins and rainbows.) So I am glad that there are people out there that are willing to go great lengths to protect these animals. Overall, C+ for execution, but A+ for taking on this issue.