Blackfish (2013)
4 stars
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
'Blackfish' follows the story of Tilikum, and the dangers of keeping orcas in captivity.
It’s an eerie scene: a tiny human figure in a wetsuit, moving silently beneath the water beside a six-ton orca.
Nothing looks particularly untoward until, as the shot draws on, you realise there is nothing normal about this scene. The trainer, Dawn Brancheau – one of SeaWorld’s best – is not simply deviating from the planned routine; she’s dying.
Tilikum, the largest orca in captivity, is the black fish at the heart of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s new documentary that takes us deep into the shrouded underbelly of America’s most famous marine park.
Through interviews with former trainers and experts, the film explores the events leading up to Brancheau’s brutal death in 2010, as well as constructing a detailed psychological profile on the whale that killed her.
Tilly, as he’s also known, was one of three whales captured off the coast of Iceland in 1983. Approximately three years old when he was taken from his mother, he initially began in marine show biz at the now defunct Sealand of the Pacific – a small park in B.C., Canada, where he endured a hellish existence.
Kept in a tank essentially formed by a large net submerged off a marina with two other whales, and confined to an especially small holding tank at night to prevent escape, Tilikum was extensively bullied as the subordinate whale in the group.
All this came to bear in 1991 when a part-trainer fell into the tank and was killed by all three orcas. But even threat of future attacks was not enough to put off SeaWorld buyers. After the Canadian park closed, Tilikum was purchased as a key asset – both as a performer and breeder.
A week before advance screenings in New York and Los Angeles, SeaWorld issued a letter slating the film as “shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate.” However, if you think this is a documentary crusading as an animal-rights agenda then you’d be wrong.
Cowperthwaite deftly handles her subject matter without getting caught up in theory or labels. Instead, she focuses on telling the story through the eloquent testimonies of her interviewees, leaving us to make up our own minds.
But perhaps the strongest testimony of them all is Tilikum himself: a huge, powerful, gracious animal reduced to sliding on and off concrete platforms, dorsal fin curved miserably to one side. In between times, we see him unobserved, floating listless and alone.
Blackfish is a powerful, philosophical discourse for our time. Highly recommended.