Pilot whales are members of the dolphin family, though their enormous size certainly qualifies them as relatives of Moby Dick. And though fishing them is outlawed in most countries, in the far north archipelago of the tiny Faroe Islands, it is close to a collective sport. Vincent Kelner’s A Taste of Whale, which made its bow at CPH:DOX, may lack a strong narrative, but it is visually and emotionally vivid. It is coming to Amazon and Apple TV in May.
The film takes no prisoners in its graphic scenes of a bloody, violent and totally unnecessary slaughter that turns the icy waters of the Faroe Island fjords a sickening red, as the townsfolk gather to herd the animals near the shore and spear them to death. The greedy, sparkling eyes of the humans make them look like the bewitched villagers in a horror film, acting in consonance with some murderous higher power – kinsmen to the big game hunters in Ulrich Seidl’s chilling Safari. And yet there’s more to it than that in this thought-provoking doc which highlights the contradictions inherent in people eating animals. Any animals.
The film begins with two stark premises. Every year in the Faroe Islands north of Scotland, upwards of 700 pilot whales are slaughtered in a traditional sea hunt called “the Grind”. And this observation from Sir Paul McCartney: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.” The stage is set for a gruesomely realistic Grind, where there are no walls of any kind between Kelner’s unflinching camera and the doomed sea mammals; and yet the entire population defends the bloody hunt tooth and nail. It strongly recalls the Sicilian tradition of the tuna mattanza, which has been considerably curbed nowadays and is limited to a sort of performance for tourists. But no holding back the Faroese, who claim the tradition as their birthright and are capable of killing 60 to 90 animals in a go because they adore the flavor of whale meat.
Our main guide is a likeable teacher and whale meat lover, Jens Mortan Rasmussen. He is introduced in his back yard carefully cutting up a slab of blubber with embedded streaks of meat, and he’s proud that he killed it himself. And he’s not the only one. Inside the neat white houses with their steep black roofs, set into picture perfect green hills rolling into the fjords, housewives announce they couldn’t live without it and children eagerly wait to be served.
But there is opposition. Suddenly the Sea Shepherds, the well-organized marine conservation activists, appear on the island holding a press conference with Pamela Anderson as their spokewoman. Led by a passionate Lamya Essemlali, who appeared in Netflix’s Seaspiracy, the Shepherds make their case against the brutal carnage of the Grind, as we watch the carcasses of the unfortunate animals dragged out of the water by hooks through their blowholes to a nearby parking lot and butchered before smiling faces.
Putting aside the ritual quality of the Grind, which dates back more than 500 years, the viewer is confronted with one unassailable argument from Rasmussen. The alternative to eating whales is eating imported beef and pork full of chemical preservatives – how is that better or less cruel? It’s a question Essemlali fields a little lamely. (“Yes, we should all eat less meat.”) But it’s at the heart of the film. If the islanders appear stubborn beyond belief (Rasmussen acknowledges the whales are full of mercury and his own mercury count is 500 times higher than normal), Kelner steers away from widening the film’s scope beyond its main topic. He leaves it up to the audience to reflect on the disconnect the film presents between humans and nature, and the film ends without much punch or closure.
Kelner, who also did the film’s cinematography, captures some astounding visuals, particularly the eerie contrast between the idyllic peace of the soul-stirring landscape and the excitement of the blood-spattered residents as they watch and participate in the Grind. Also well-used are some haunting tunes by Australian vocalist and songwriter Merryn Jeann that lend a folk flavor.
Director, screenplay, cinematography: Vincent Kelner
Producer: Rémi Grellety
Editing: Olivier Marzin
Music: Merryn Jeann
Production company: Warboys Films (France)
World sales: Films Boutique (international). Amazon and Apple TV (only North America).
Venue: CPH:DOX (F:act)
In Faroese, English, French
85 minutes
