The 2010 documentary “The Cove” gave me all the reason I needed to never return to SeaWorld again. While that film played like a melodrama, horror movie, heist caper and took swipes at an entire country and their “culture”, the new documentary “Blackfish” targets the amusement corporation directly with a scathing journalistic exposé.
Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s film is produced and distributed by CNN Films, and it has a sharp investigative quality and traditional, talking heads approach to this horror story. While it lacks some of “The Cove’s” pathos and energy, it still packs a wallop.
“Blackfish,” like “The Cove,” has the unique quality of not being an environmental film. Both dolphins and whales are characterized as animals with specifically human-like qualities. Each of the trainers that interact with the orcas describes the sensation of looking into their eyes and seeing something back. Cowperthwaite can reach the audience on moral terms and never has to raise questions of the effect of removing these whales from their habitat on the broader environment.
It’s more accurately the story of Tilikum, a male killer whale captured from the wild in the ‘70s since used to breed others throughout the SeaWorld enterprise. In 1983, he killed a female trainer at a dinky amusement part called Sealand. The “accident” was swept under the rug and Tilikum was sold to SeaWorld, where 20 years later he killed Dawn Brancheau in much the same manner.
The way Cowperthwaite arranges her talking head interviews, they paint a portrait of a revenge tale. Tilikum was kidnapped from his home as his family watched him be hauled away. In Sealand he was punished for not performing stunts through starvation and isolation with two aggressive female whales. His hide would be “raked” by rivals and he’d be given nowhere to run. Now his attacks are just years in the making.
This isn’t merely a story of a dangerous animal but one that is arguably mentally ill, ravaged by years of abuse and hardship. Cowperthwaite and the subjects she interviews ties Tilikum’s trauma directly to SeaWorld, and their rationale is answered in one fairly silly quote: “His semen is worth a lot of money.”
“Blackfish” is a morality tale against the captivity of whales, citing the negligence in hiring animal trainers who know nothing of marine biology and misleading information about the lifespan of orcas, but it’s indirectly an attack on corporate culture.
They’re the ones leading the media narrative that Dawn Brancheau’s death was the result of trainer error. They’re the ones making the decisions to separate mother whales from their calves (the film has a harrowing sequence in which a mother makes noises never before recorded by scientists in an attempt to locate her child). They’re the ones requiring trainers to tow the company line and recite their family-friendly image.
It’s a sickening portrayal, and one merely needs to watch five minutes of “Blackfish” to know that orca performances such as these should never happen again, for the benefit of the whales and their trainers.
Cowperthwaite finds brilliant footage of whales leaping out of the water and nearly crushing trainers in the water, or another extended sequence in which a man is dragged by his feet several times underwater until finally he is let go and scrambles to safety.
The powerful ending of “The Cove” would move anyone to immediate action. “Blackfish” has no such moment, and it will not generate the emotion that a film about dolphin torture could, but it invokes common sense and logic, leaving real blood in the water between SeaWorld and its opponents.
3 ½ stars