The Cove

[Mark Roberts]

W.r.t. the sentimentality of "The Cove", I would have to agree with  
Kore'eda that it's an issue (although it did provide a perfect lead in  
for the rather good "South Park" parody). In a way, it seems like the  
film tries to pursue too many different sorts of claims, with  
debatable results. On that note, though, one thing that struck me  
during the press screening last September concerned the treatment of  
Ric O'Barry. As the main protagonist of the film, his appeal to the  
audience seems grounded in animal rights activism, which tends to veer  
towards the sentimental.

During the Q & A following the screening, though, O'Barry had a very  
different tone. As I recall, he didn't say much of anything about the  
film's animal rights appeal, he didn't try to elaborate or reinforce  
it, and one might say that he even seemed to distance himself from it.  
Instead, he hammered on the mercury problem and its global dimensions.  
For O'Barry, there was more or less a direct line from Minamata to  
Taiji, and he emphasized that this was the real import of the film. He  
held up a recent book on the Niigata Minamata disease by book by Saitô  
Hisashi that had just been published last September: <http://sites.google.com/site/niigataminamata/ 
 > (I haven't checked it, but this might be one of the most recent  
significant works on the problem). O'Barry's message to the assembled  
journalists was basically: "it's your job to investigate this -- get  
going."

I can't say that I've taken an exhaustive look at the recent press  
coverage, but in what I've seen it's striking that the focus is more  
on the issue of cultural sensitivity than the rather more serious  
problem of rising mercury levels in the global food supply. The recent  
Japan Today article, for example, includes the statement "Most  
Japanese have never eaten dolphin meat." If the claims of the film are  
correct, though, Japanese who think they are eating whale meat may  
actually be getting dolphin meat instead, and it contains dangerous  
levels of mercury.

Following the press screening last year, I found myself wondering  
whether O'Barry had changed his tone after the production of the film,  
or previous press conferences, i.e., from an animal rights to a global  
pollution appeal (from particular to universal), or whether the  
director had chosen to present him more as an animal rights activist,  
as a way to increase the film's pathos.

Regards,

M. Roberts