The Cove

This is a very good documentary that does a good job making you want to go to the Mystic Aquarium and free the dolphins. Why not carry it all the way and free all the fish as well? Left me feeling puzzled and morally compromised. The dolphin slaughter that we see in this film is horrific (I have to admit that I missed part of the movie, fell asleep, no fault of the film, I was just dead tired), but there's a weird contradiction at the heart of the film. As pointed out, the very cuteness of the dolphins, the appearance of the smile, is what has made them such valuable attractions in seaquariums, and has led, in part, to the slaughter thousands of other dolphins. Of course it's this very cuteness that makes us watch this film and want the dolphins to be freed. Shouldn't we also free the less cute, less intelligent mammals? If we're repulsed by eating dolphin meat - setting aside its apparent mercury contamination - what aren't we repulsed by eating pork? salmon? No easy answers in this film, or in life. The Cove is pretty well made, and begins with a lot of excitement - there appears to be incredible hostility against in Taiji, Japan, against the westerners who are there to protect the dolphins, and the police seem to follow them all the time - but this doesn't explain how on earth they were able to sneak into the dolphin cove (at night) at least twice to place underwater cameras and generally go ahead with the whole process of making the film. Somehow, I think in America this could not have happened. The Japanese seem to think that merely telling the filmmakers to stay off restricted ground will stop the project. Very naive - or maybe the film didn't give us the whole picture. Were they (the film crew) really as endangered as the film made them out to be?