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Blackfish Movie Review

Blackfish is a 2013 documentary film directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. It’s a heartbreaking and important doc.

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“There is no record of an orca doing

any harm to a human in the wild“

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The documentary concerns the captivity of Tilikum, an orca involved in the deaths of three trainers at SeaWorld as well as the consequences of keeping these animals in captivity. This film was such an effective indictment of SeaWorld that eventually lead to the termination of breeding orcas in these places. This is the power of the documentary medium as the best tool probably that activists have at their disposal.

Gabriela Cowperthwaite directed the movie with a lot of force and conviction. It’s a shame that she would not make any significant film after this one as she showed some fine filmmaking here. The interviews range from important and insightful to downright terrifying and heartbreaking. The flow of the movie is solid and its short runtime prevented it from becoming too preachy or repetitive.

I have to say, however, that the movie felt a bit one-sided and aggressive in its interviews. I am on the side of these filmmakers as they are on the right side of history for sure, but because SeaWorld did not want to contribute and because some of those interviews felt more like stating emotions as facts than true facts, the movie ended up being a bit too manipulative, even if its intentions were clearly admirable.

Blackfish showed the world how horribly these orcas were treated in these facilities and just how tragic it must be like for these animals to be confined to such a small space when in the wild they would swim for hundreds of kilometers in the open ocean. The movie also shows that the mistreatment of animals can negatively impact the people working with those animals, which is exactly what happened as Tilikum ended up killing a couple of these trainers.

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Admittedly, I had very little sympathy for these trainers as they participated in this mistreatment, but it was still important to bring that human side to a movie that easily could have turned into something resembling a PETA project. The passionate plea to the film’s messaging made it feel like activist piece of propaganda for better and for worse – it was too aggressive, but also obviously fighting for the right thing, so it worked for me for the most part. I just wished that it was more insightful about the attendance at these events and the psychology behind the people’s obsession with watching live animals perform for their amusement.