Review: Documentary “Blackfish,” directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Orca whales are not your friends. Remember how Free Willy was basically about the importance of releasing wild animals back into the wild? The documentary Blackfish, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, puts a nonfiction spin on that narrative—in a terrifying, shocking way that should have us all casting a wary eye at SeaWorld and other similar parks. Whales have died and people have died. When are we going to stop this?

Cowperthwaite decided to work on Blackfish after she learned of the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in February 2010; Brancheau was drowned by bull whale Tilikum, one of the main attractions at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. Cowperthwaite, who has taken her children to SeaWorld, was shocked by the death, and even more shocked when she learned Tilikum was involved in the deaths of two other people in the past 20 years, a trainer at another park and a man who slipped into Tilikum’s pool in a misguided effort to bond with the animal. And her questions about why SeaWorld was still allowing Tilikum to perform led to more and more inquiries—how SeaWorld got its whales, how it coached its trainers and park employees, how it has shirked responsibility for both the whales’ and the park’s own behavior—all of which come together in this devastating film.

It will be extremely difficult for viewers to come out of this film without feeling for both sides—for the young, impressionable, whale-obsessed trainers who joined SeaWorld thinking they would form legitimate bonds and friendships with these animals, and for the animals themselves that were stolen from their families and sold to such parks for a life of entrapment. Shaky footage from shows where whales dragged their trainers underneath the water and held them there, or purposefully fell on trainers, crushing their bodies, are terrifying and harrowing, but the man who tells of participating in capturing whales for sale has been through some shit, too. It’s all over his face, all over his voice, all over everything. You’re not going to forget his pain easily.

In fact, it doesn’t seem like anyone involved in SeaWorld or similar parks’ practices has walked away unscathed—ex-SeaWorld trainer after trainer tells Cowperthwaite, through tears, about their regrets; family members of dead trainers look shell-shocked; scientists who study whales in the wild are disgusted with captivity in general. And amid all this is Tilikum, who Cowperthwaite discovers was horrendously bullied by older female whales at another park, who has probably gone somewhat insane from captivity, who has basically been milked for his sperm by SeaWorld (54 percent of their whales are descendants of his), whose dorsal fin has collapsed because of lack of use. The people he’s killed are never coming back, but Tilikum isn’t ever really coming back either, you know? No one wins in Blackfish but that’s absolutely the point—you won’t forget Cowperthwaite’s documentary, and you shouldn’t.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs.