The Cove in Japan?

[Mark Roberts]

On Friday, "The Cove" had its first screening in Japan at the FCCJ.  
Actually, there were two simultaneous screenings, because the venue  
was so packed that Karen Severns, the film programmer and event  
organizer, opened a second room downstairs to accommodate everybody.

Coverage by the Japan Times is here:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090927a3.html

Overall, "The Cove" is a fairly polished production. More so than,  
say, "Darwin's Nightmare". There's a lot of underwater photography and  
clearly they had significant budget. As a documentary, it's  
complicated, highly ambitious, and of course not unproblematic. My  
sense was that the film goes some length to control its animal rights  
appeal, trying to avoid the kind of overt sentimentalism that would  
cause people who are indifferent/unsympathetic to tune it out. Yes, it  
is foregrounded in the film, and some will find that objectionable,  
but there are actually quite a few different claims being made, e.g.  
about the fishing industry, environmental pollution, government  
policy, food culture, and Japan's strategy to control the  
International Whaling Commission. The film is not very flattering to  
Japan but it also spends a decent chunk of time to make the point that  
most Japanese are not aware of the issues and practices being exposed.

The most alarming claim concerns mercury in the world's oceans, and  
this was really the focus of the press conference. Ric O'Barry, the  
protagonist of the film, asserts that dolphins in the world's oceans  
now contain levels of mercury higher than what was found at Minamata,  
that it is moving up the food chain at an alarming rate. Minamata was  
invoked repeatedly during the press conference. One claim in the film  
that is not mentioned in the Japan Times article is that much of the  
whale meat being sold in Japan is actually dolphin meat being passed  
off as the genuine article, and it's full of methyl mercury. For me,  
this recalled a comment by Tsuchimoto Noriaki <http://www.japanfocus.org/--Kamanaka_Tsuchimoto_Field/2614 
 >: "I used to think that after witnessing Minamata disease, humankind  
would have learned a lesson. But if you look at where the world’s  
mercury levels have gone since, it’s clear that's simply wrong."

Being at the FCCJ press conference, my sense was that the audience  
response was less "mixed" than the Japan Times article suggests. Most  
of the comments during Q & A were from journalists, and most of them  
seemed to be about clarifying information or getting details. There  
was no discussion of the film as a film, i.e., how it was constructed,  
its documentary style, etc. Nobody questioned that. The comments of  
Dr. Endo were the only deeply critical reaction, and he was very  
agitated. Endo did not respond when the moderator called upon him to  
formulate a question, and finally somebody just grabbed the microphone  
away from him. Later, he calmed down and was given the final question.  
When asked about the science behind the film, O'Barry's response  
pointed back to Endo's own research. Everybody laughed and Endo fell  
silent.

As far as I heard at the press screening, there are as yet no plans to  
distribute the film in Japan. However, it will screen here at TIFF  
next month, and maybe somebody will decide to pick it up then.

M
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