Blackfish: Captivity Does Ugly Things to a Whale

Writer-director Gabriela Cowperwaite’s eye-opening and disturbing new documentary feature, Blackfish, concerns the tale of a pitiable killer whale named Tilikum. Dwelling in captivity for three decades in marine theme parks—including his current home, SeaWorld Orlando—the orca has been involved in the deaths of three people. On the most immediate level, Cowperwaite’s film functions as a sort of zoological true crime thriller about the ugly specifics of Tilikum’s mistreatment and the brutal deaths that allegedly stemmed from such abuse. More broadly, Blackfish tackles the morality of the very notion of keeping killer whales in captivity, and asks whether tourist dollars are worth the risks to trainers and to the creatures themselves.

It’s easy to admire the agility of Cowperwaite’s methods if one accepts as a given that Blackfish is an exposé with an undisguised bias in favor of animal welfare. To make the case for SeaWorld’s malfeasance, the director smoothly blends together jaw-dropping found footage, archival photos, visual effects, and talking-head interviews with trainers, scientists, and eyewitnesses. Even if one is skeptical of the film’s more wobbly assertions—such as the suggestion that orcas feel emotions more strongly than humans—the accumulated picture of baffling negligence and unfettered corporate avarice on the part of marine parks is difficult to dismiss.

Although it recalls Grizzly Man in its ruminations on the thorny relationship between animals and humans, Cowperwaithe’s film is neither as cerebral nor as cynical as Werner Herzog’s 2005 feature. Blackfish‘s righteous outrage makes it closer kin to James Marsh’s unsettling tale of chimpanzee maltreatment, Project Nim. Cowperwaite cunningly employs the particulars of Tilikum’s story to demolish the fiction that marine parks are harmless family fun. Plainly, the whales might have something to say in the matter.