The Cove is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Louie Psihoyos that analyzes and questions dolphin hunting practices in Japan. The film is a call to action to halt mass dolphin kills and captures and change Japanese fishing practices. It also seeks to inform and educate the public about the dangers of keeping cetaceans in captivity and the increasing hazard of mercury poisoning from consuming dolphin meat.
Psihoyos is a former-National Geographic photographer and a co-founder of the Oceanic Preservation Society, and the film is presented from an ocean conservationist's point of view.OPSociety.org , Oceanic Preservation Society – FactsCatsoulis, Jeannette. The Cove (2008) From Flipper's Trainer to Dolphin Defender The New York Times. July 31, 2009. Portions were filmed secretly in 2007 using underwater microphones and high-definition cameras disguised as rocks."Dolphin slaughter film a hit at Sundance" The Japan Times. (January 27, 2009). Retrieved on January 27, 2009.Jurgensen, John. A Dolphin Horror Film The Wall Street Journal. July 31, 2009. The film highlights the fact that the number of dolphins killed in the Taiji dolphin drive hunt is several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic, and asserts that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year by the country's whaling industry. The migrating dolphins are herded into a cove where they are netted off. The young and pretty are sold to oceanariums and dolphinariums around the world, and the rest are brutally slaughtered. The film argues that dolphin hunting as practiced in Japan is unnecessary and cruel.
Although The Cove has drawn some controversy over its supposed lack of neutrality, it has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. Most notably, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010. It also won the U.S. Audience Award at the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival in January 2009, selected out of 879 submissions in the category.The Cove Sundance Festival 2009
Synopsis The film follows former-dolphin-trainer-turned-activist Ric O'Barry's quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. In the 1960s, O'Barry helped capture and train the five wild dolphins who shared the role of "Flipper" in the hit television series of the same name. The show fueled widespread public adoration of dolphins and influenced the development of marine parks that included dolphins among their attractions.
According to O'Barry, one of the dolphins committed a form of suicide in his arms by closing her blowhole voluntarily in order to suffocate, after which he came to see the dolphin capture industry as cruel and inhumane. One day later, he was arrested off the island of Bimini for attempting to set free a captured dolphin. Since then, O'Barry has dedicated himself full-time as an advocate on behalf of dolphins around the world.
After meeting with O'Barry, Psihoyos and his crew travel to Taiji, Japan, a town that appears to be devoted to dolphins and whales. A group of local fishermen engage in dolphin drive hunting and generate tremendous revenues for the town by selling trapped dolphins to aquariums and marine parks around the world, with a premium paid for female bottlenose dolphins.
In an isolated cove surrounded by wire fences and "Keep Out" signs, an activity takes place that the townspeople attempt to hide from the public. The dolphins that are not sold are driven into the cove and killed, with only modest income derived from the sale of the meat to supermarkets throughout Japan.
All activists who attempt to view or film the dolphin killing in the cove are physically prevented from doing so by the fishermen, with the support of the local police and government, and the filmmakers are questioned by the authorities. Faced with this, Psihoyos, O'Barry, decide to covertly film what is taking place in the cove.
Inspired by a Japanese rock temple, the crew works with Industrial Light & Magic artists in order to create disguised rocks which can hide high-definition video cameras and military-grade thermal cameras. Under the cover of night, the film crew installs the cameras and audio-recording equipment throughout the cove. They also build a blimp drone with a gyroscoped camera that is used to take aerial footage of the cove after the massacre.
The local government officials are involved in helping to hide the slaughter, and the Japanese public is largely unaware of the hunt and the marketing of dolphin meat, which contains dangerously high levels of mercury. Two Taiji city councilors are interviewed who have advocated for the removal of dolphin meat from local school lunches due concerns about mercury.
The film shows several minutes of unedited footage of local fishermen trapping herds of dolphins and stabbing them one by one, causing all of the dolphins to die of blood loss. The entire cove turns deep red.
Near the end, Psihoyos shows some of the grisly footage he was able to film during a dolphin slaughter to a Japanese official, who had repeatedly tried to minimize the incident during his interview. The official's friendly demeanor hardens, and he asks Psihoyos when and where the footage was filmed.
The film also reports on Japan's alleged "buying" of the votes of poor nations in the International Whaling Commission, stating that Japan has rewarded nations with infrastructure projects in exchange for supporting it.
After Psihoyos shows the footage to the Japanese official, the film cuts to O'Barry interrupting the annual meeting of the IWC. As the Japanese delegate is saying how Japanese fishermen have made their whaling tactics more humane, O'Barry enters the crowded meeting room with a TV playing the footage from the cove strapped to his chest and walks around until he is escorted from the building. He then stands with the TV in a crowded intersection in Japan, where passersby stop to watch.
In a post-credits scene, the film crew is shown gifting the drone blimp to the local authorities.
Cast
Ric O'Barry – Co-Founder, Oceanic Preservation Society Louie Psihoyos – Earth Island Institute Hardy Jones – Founder, BlueVoice.org Michael Illiff – Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania Joji Morishita – IWC Delegate for Japan (archival footage) Ian Campbell – Former Australian Cabinet Minister Captain Paul Watson – President, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society; Co-Founder, Greenpeace Doug DeMaster, Ph.D. – U.S. Deputy Commissioner for the IWC Frederic Briand, Ph.D. - IWC Commissioner for Monaco Dave Rastovich – Co-Founder, Surfers for Cetaceans Hayden Panettiere – Whaleman Foundation/Save the Whales Again! (archival footage) Isabel Lucas – Whaleman Foundation/Save the Whales Again! (archival footage) Hannah Fraser (archival footage) Charles Hambleton – a member of Louie's "secret OPS" team ("a guy that has a heart of gold and nerves of steel") Simon Hutchins – a member of Louie's "secret OPS" team ("the only guy that had military experience") Joe Chisholm – a member of Louie's "secret OPS" team ("organized rock concerts") Mandy-Rae Cruickshank – a member of Louie's "secret OPS" team (a freediver) Kirk Krack – a member of Louie's "secret OPS" team (a freediver) Roger Payne, Ph.D. – Ocean Alliance Hideki Moronuki – Deputy Director, Fisheries Agency of Japan; Manager of Cetacean Quotas Dan Goodman – Legal Advisor to Japan's IWC Delegation Tetsuya Endo, Ph.D. – Health Sciences University of Hokkaido C. Scott Baker, Ph.D. – Specialist in DNA Species Identification; Oregon State University Brook Aitken – OPS Cameraman Dr. John Potter – Underwater Acoustics Cousultant John Fuller – Former IWC Delegate for Antigua and Barbuda Atherton Martin – Former IWC Representative for Dominica
Production To film in the cove, the filmmakers used specialized high-definition cameras that were camouflaged to look like rocks. These cameras were so well hidden that, according to director Louie Psihoyos, the crew had a hard time finding them again.Wired.com, How Filmmakers Used Spy Tech to Catch Dolphin Slaughter, August 20, 2009 A high-grade military thermal camera and different night vision cameras were also used in the production of the film.
Reception Film critics On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has 95% approval rating based on reviews from 133 critics, with an average rating of 8.00/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Though decidedly one-sided, The Cove is an impeccably crafted, suspenseful exposé of the covert slaughter of dolphins in Japan." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has an average score of 84 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (out of four), calling it "a certain Oscar nominee".The Cove RogerEbert.com Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called the film "an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller", going on to describe it as "one of the most audacious and perilous operations in the history of the conservation movement". Other reviewers also played up the espionage angle of the film, including Time magazine's Mary Pols, who said The Cove "puts Hollywood capers like Mission Impossible to shame", and Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor, who called it "a rousing piece of real-world thriller filmmaking".
Some reviews recognized the film's entertainment value, but did not view it as an "objective documentary". Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern labeled the film a "quasidocumentary framed as a high-tech thriller" with an "agitprop style" that has "an excess of artifice and a dearth of facts". David Cox of The Guardian Film Blog called it a "piece of evangelism", and mused rhetorically: "Westerners ... kill and eat cows. Easterners eat dolphins. What's the difference?". Michelle Orange of Movieline ended her review: "How much of this should we believe? As a piece of propaganda, The Cove is brilliant; as a story of ingenuity and triumph over what seems like senseless brutality, it is exceptionally well-told; but as a conscientious overview of a complex and deeply fraught, layered issue, it invokes the same phrase as even the most well-intentioned, impassioned activist docs: Buyer beware."
Reactions in Taiji, Japan The whale and dolphin hunting season in Japan usually begins on September 1 each year, but in 2009 it began on September 9. Although activists tended to believe this was because of the publicity generated by the film, it was reported that the delay was due to the weather and rough seas. According to campaigners, out of the 100 dolphins captured on September 9, some were taken to be sold to marine museums and the rest were released, while 50 pilot whales were killed and sold for meat on the same day. Some campaigners began to claim it had become apparent that The Cove was having an impact on the way in which Japanese fisherman normally conducted the dolphin hunt,Conservationists say 70 dolphins in Japan released. Associated Press. September 15, 2009. though on March 23, 2010, the Japanese government stated: "The dolphin hunting is a part of traditional fishery of this country and it has been lawfully carried out."
After the film won the Oscar for Best Documentary, the mayor of Taiji and the chief of the Taiji Fishery Union released a statement that said: "The hunt is performed legally and properly with the permission of Wakayama Prefecture [in which Taiji resides]." Taiji assemblyman Hisato Ryono, one of the two local legislators who broke ranks and publicly called for removal of dolphin meat from school lunches, said he was lied to by the producers of the film about what the film would contain.Alabaster, Jay, (Associated Press), "Cove Oscar Won't End Taiji Dolphin Kill", Japan Times, March 20, 2010, p. 2.