The Cove (2008)

Richard O'Barry: If you aren't an activist, you're an inactivist. 

"Shallow Water. Deep Secret."

You don't have to be a tree hugging hippy to be completely saddened by the events that dolphin activist Richard O'Berry and director Louie Psihoyos are able to capture in this real life spy thriller. Obviously it is a documentary, but it would be unfair to only label it as such. It not only informs the viewer on the issue that takes place every September in Taijii, but it also shows it in excruciating detail, and serves as a rallying cry for every person that is enraged by what they see. And to show the shocking conclusion to what happens when the dolphins are enclosed in the Cove, which is off limits to everyone, is not an easy thing to do. 

Richard O'Berry used to be the trainer for the television hit, Flipper. He captured all five dolphins that were used on the show. He changed his tune on the issue though, and now believes dolphin capturing to be an extreme injustice. He feels as though he has to make up for what he did on the show Flipper. He also believes that he is to blame for a lot of the stuff that has come from the shows popularity. What made him stop being a trainer, and instead become the biggest activist against dolphin capture? He tells us it was one of the dolphins from the show, Kathy, which committed suicide in his arms because of the major depression that plagued it. It's hard not to believe O'Berry. The first time I watched this documentary, I was sort of worried that it was just some nut job blowing smoke. When we first meet O'Berry, he is in a car where he tells the director that they are being followed and if the fisherman could, they would murder him. After twenty minutes, I wholeheartedly believed him. 

The Cove doesn't go into great detail about why these fishermen do what they do. That isn't because of a lack of trying on their part, but because they really don't have a reason. They have excuses, but they don't make much sense. They say it is their heritage. Well damn, we used to hang women that could do math. It's our heritage, so I guess it's okay. Still, if it were their heritage you'd think more of them would know about it. Countless interviewees attest to never hearing about dolphin fishing and are shocked to hear that people actually do eat them. Then they say that the meat is beneficial to their diet. Too bad it has extremely high levels of mercury, which slowly tear apart all of your sensory functions like sight and hearing, until you finally die. Finally, there is the fact that they want to cut down on the population, saying that the dolphins are actually pests because, get this, they eat fish. They say the dolphins eat to much fish and it is destroying their fishing. It probably isn't the dolphins that are pulling out hundreds of thousands of fish per day because they want to make sushi.

Where the movie really takes form is in its director and activists decision to sneak into the private cove and set up a bunch of hidden cameras. Doing this is extremely dangerous because if they are caught two things will happen, either they will be arrested(which in Japan is no minor thing) or be killed. They still go through with it and are successful. What comes next is a sobering five minutes where no words are spoken, probably because words can't describe what we are seeing. 

It all seems so mindless. There seems to be no real point. The way these fishermen act towards the dolphins is the way that the weird kid in your first grade class acts towards ants on the play ground. That kid has a compulsion to stomp every ant he sees, and the action of these men is eerily similar. 

At the very end of the movie, they give details on just how you can help the cause if you are affected by what you see. Richard O'Berry says he wants to see this slaughter ended before he dies, and for his and the dolphins sake, I hope his wish can come true. The fact that the video has been publicly displayed, yet the slaughter still occurs annually is mind boggling.