Review for The Cove

When you think of dolphins the first thing you think is: Intelligence. If there was another animal (besides the apes) that represents intelligence it would be the dolphin. The Cove depicts the annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins who are corralled into a small cove and then murdered. It seems a strong word to use for what is essentially fishing, but the footage of these Japanese people is not of them fishing, or catching the animals, they are killing them, hacking at them with blades and harpoons and knives and the most shocking thing is not that the government allows it to happen, it's that no one knows it is happening. When people from Tokyo are interviewed none of them believe it and most deny that they would eat dolphin.
Following the activists, aided by Ric O'Barry, who started off his career as the trainer of dolphins for the show Flipper, they try to get footage of this slaughter taking place. They are harassed by the local fishermen who will not allow people to film around this area and so they have special cameras created that they can place and view this. Sadly, much like Pandora's Box, I really wish I hadn't. The sight of the water literally bright red with the blood of the dolphins made my heart sink and made me sick to my stomach. The fact that the Japanese claimed that not only was this necessary because of the reduction in fish stocks, but that the methods were now more humane was just shocking.
Of course, this documentary is utterly one-sided, there is no explanation as to why this culling was taking place and though they speculate it is for food there is never a look at the economics behind it. As laughable as it is for them to say we must kill them as they are eating our fish, it's not that far-fetched. However, the methods used are so barbaric that even if they did explore this you simply could not sympathise with it at all. Some Japanese upon viewing this documentary have likened it to the West's killing of cows and yet fail to take into account the intelligence of the dolphin and the fact that very few people actually eat dolphin anyway.
Extras include over forty extra minutes of both behind the scenes and additional footage that could easily have been incorporated into the film. One long segment goes into detail about the danger that the mercury in dolphin meat (which was being fed to the local schools) is and when you learn about the side effects it is pretty terrifying. A very bizarre video of the Whale Festival that Taiji has every year is very disturbing almost like a celebration of the kill and the whole town seem to be quite oblivious to what they are doing and you can understand why they compare the town to Twin Peaks. Commentary by Director Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens is almost as fascinating as the film itself as they go into more detail and how the film came to be. I do wish they had brought Ric O'Barry on too to speak, but this was still pretty interesting.
The Cove is wonderfully shot and edited together and thoroughly deserving of the Best Documentary Oscar, the music, the voice over and the whole overall construction of the piece is just wonderful and a great example of documentary filmmaking.