Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #38: Blackfish (2013).

 

On the surface, SeaWorld may seem a pretty harmless place. Somewhere you can take the whole family to for a nice show and some interaction with nature. But the SeaWorld chain has some very dark secrets, as Gabriella Cowperthwaite's Blackfish (2013) emphasizes.

This passionately angry documentary impacted me viscerally when I first saw it in April, and thankfully it has been similarly received worldwide. It follows Tillikum, an orca captured in the 1980s as a calf in the Atlantic, who was involved in three fatal attacks on SeaWorld trainers in the US, most notably that which befell the chain's poster-girl trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010. It also covers another attack made on a trainer, before a live audience, which luckily ended with the orca releasing him. Terrifying stuff.

To Cowperthwaite's credit, for balance she did consult SeaWorld to be interviewed for this film but unsurprisingly they declined all her requests. We do still hear from numerous former employees and trainers who all have some pretty choice words against the company whose management left them genuinely disillusioned, and these interviews are handled with admirable discretion and objectivity. As one of the interviewees says, regarding the treatment of a mother orca and her calf, “You might keep them, but they are not your whales.”

Blackfish may seem initially like a totally leftish piece, but I think it transcends all political divisions. It's about inhumanity, greed, corruption and, above all else, exploitation. Even Pixar, after seeing it, decided against including a scene at SeaWorld in Finding Dory. Kudos to them for that. Even more to Gabriella Cowperthwaite. Blackfish is brave and heartbreaking in its ambitions, but also very, very well handled. A tremendous achievement.