A Whale of a Tale

A Whale of a Tale

“The Cove,” directed by Louis Psihoyos in 2009, is an anti-whaling film. It was one of the most successful activist documentaries ever made in terms of attracting global attention. Not only did it garner the Oscar for Best Documentary, but one of its text message campaigns reached hundreds of millions of television viewers once. The rest of the time, Ric O’Barry, a protestor featured in “The Cove” and a campaigner against whaling in Japan for years before that, can’t get arrested.

Needless to say this has put Taiji on the map. Dolphins and whales are hunted here to be eaten; the best ones get sent to aquariums around the world. If you ask me if you ask any Westerner it’s a gruesome horror show that needs to be shut down yesterday. But these men will tell you it’s just business: their culture; fish. One resident says about activists who have been showing up since the movie, “There’s nothing worse than a scene in an Academy Award winning film.” Director Megumi Sasaki gives us access to Taiji and its people that “The Cove” couldn’t even dream of having, being as extremely outsider made as it was.

She listens to them speak matter of factly about something they’ve been doing for generations to support their community without sounding like they’re trying to create good PR. Sasaki also documents what are no doubt some tense moments between whalers and protesters, which make for some gripping cinema when passions clash head on like this. For example: Steve is a white teacher who lives in Japan now; he swims out where they’ve cordoned off the dolphins and throws them a ball with which to play before they die (they always die).

This interaction ends with two sides agreeing that while Steve didn’t break any laws he also didn’t use manners, which is against the Japanese way; so they bow. It’s one of many morally complicated scenes captured in this story, but to what end? The tragedy of the disagreement doesn’t inspire heavy emotion here so much as frustration. Sasaki does try to personal-angle us with Jay Alabaster, an Associated Press reporter who has lived in Japan for over a decade. He later moves to Taiji and becomes a true resident to the problem but even then he only observes with hopes of turning it into a book.

Jay is a quaint mascot for the movie, showing what can be achieved by recognizing the other side; but even his passion (which is sometimes overlong within some rough-around the edges filmmaking), is distilled with a cold documentary touch. It becomes clear throughout the doc that neither side of this debate is going to budge. As an act of showing both sides to one argument by a filmmaker, “A Whale of a Tale” is highly intriguing at first and then narratively exhausting as we slam from one immovable wall to the other and back again.

Despite discussing this issue for five years, there is little more said about it than “it’s complicated.” What surprises at the end of the movie is only how money talks.

What “A Whale of a Tale” does better than “The Cove” its success, in other words comes from our tendency to make real life people one dimensional heroes and villains, good and evil. In her unofficial but necessary sequel to “The Cove,” Sasaki rightly takes into account that both sides of a conflict think they’re right.

Watch A Whale of a Tale For Free On Gomovies.