Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Cove
Twas a dark and stormy night when I finally ventured into The Cove. I'd heard great reviews out of the Sydney Film Festival and during the film's theatrical release, but hadn't managed to catch up with this award winning documentary until last night.
The rain relentlessly hammering on the windows certainly added to the intense atmosphere Louie Psihoyos' film creates. From the opening grey-toned thermal images, it's clear this isn't an ordinary documentary. I was struck how malleable the genre is to Psihoyos' obvious creative intent to present a thriller. I think we're long past the idea that documentaries present the truth; surely they can only ever convey a truth, one highly structured, created and edited to subjective ends. To that end, Psihoyos' efforts to include the Japanese side of the story largely comes across as an afterthought, however I believe this is mediated by his well articulated decision to make The Cove Ric O'Barry's story.
As the trainer behind the watershed TV series, Flipper, O'Barry is haunted by the horrific legacy he's created. He can't put the genie back in the bottle, but he has devoted his life to freeing dolphins from captivity, and trying to prevent the yearly slaughter of 23,000 wild dolphins in the cove of Taiji, Japan. O'Barry's impassioned, borderline paranoid pursuit grounds the film in subjectivity, around which Psihoyo's wraps his Mission Impossible style espionage.
Whether or not such hi-tech hi-jinks (such as ILM designer rock cameras and thermal imaging equipment) are actually required isn't the point. What's important is how Psihoyo's has decided to sell this story, and with a raft of festival awards and an Oscar nomination, it seems his thriller bent has been extremely successful. It'll be interesting to see if this genre-melding style will catch on with other documentarians.
Curiously, The Cove avoids setting the dolphin and whale hunting in historical context. The bitter irony is that the United States encouraged Japan to hunt caeteans as a source of cheap protein in the wake of WWII. There's little doubt this and the downstream reversal of fishing rights of the International Whaling Commission have contributed to Japan's stubbornness on this issue.
For a less stream-of-consciousness review I can recommend heading over to Last Night with Riviera or B Movies. I can also vigorously encourage people to track down The Cove on DVD and educate yourselves about this futile slaughter. I still can't get my head around the fact that the dolphin meat is actually poisoning consumers, and is fraudulently being sold as the more prized whale meat. The sheer bloody-mindedness of this highly subsidised industry beggers belief.
And finally, it looks as though despite protests by the Taiji fishermen, The Cove will hit Japanese cinemas in April this year. I'll be fascinated to read how this provocative, unapologetic documentary goes over with local audiences.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Nice review, Alice, as always!
I loved the hell out of this film, it absolutely tore me in half. But the docu-as-thriller concept isn't new; Errol Morris pioneered that in the 1980s with THE THIN BLUE LINE.
Great point about the US originally encouraging the Japanese to Whale post-WWII, I wasn't aware of that!
THE THIN BLUE LINE is one of those 'ashamed I haven't seen' films. I have heard that Errol Morris did great things with that doco, must track it down pronto.
I'm not sure I meant to imply the concept is new, rather I was mulling over the subjectivity that such a style engenders. My post-modernist history brain flirts with the idea that, 'there is no truth, only fiction' - and while I find that statement too extreme, I'm fascinated by the construction of truth and the awareness and potential for reflexivity of the filmmakers.
To which end, it's intriguing that they left out the WWII info, right? Wouldn't that have added a curious twist to the story? Then again, I think Psihoyo's was content to focus on O'Barry's mea culpa.
Very interesting to read your thoughts on this one Alice. Though it's nothing new, I think subjective, my-truth-not-the-truth documentaries are increasingly common (merci Michael Moore & Al Gore?).
In my view that's a very good thing. Firstly, I think viewers are far more media-savvy than then used to be: they understand how image and narrative can be manipulated to infer meaning. We're not fooled that easily. Secondly it allows filmmakers to be more political, and feature documentaries (which now reach audiences far and wide) can become a powerful tool for activists.
Appropriating the tropes of genre filmmaking seems like a natural next step to broaden that audience. The Art of the Steal and Murder in Mesopotamia come to mind.
While I agree the likes of Moore and Gore have gone a long way to highlighting the subjectivity of documentaries, I could still do with seeing more reflexivity. I have no doubt that you need a whole lot of conviction to make a doco, but my inner historian screams for a declaration that this is a construction. Then again, perhaps these days that goes without saying.
At least the appropriation of genre tropes clearly highlights the filmmaker's fingerprints.
Post a Comment