SFF 2013 Day 1: Opening Night, "Blackfish", In The Shadow of Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert 1942-2013

     Yesterday the sun rose over a day that would open the 2013 Sarasota Film Festival and the first in 70 years that wouldn't greet Roger Ebert. As many of you know, Roger passed Thursday afternoon. He announced two days prior (on the 46th anniversary of his hire date as the film-critic for the Chicago Sun-Times) that the fracture which had caused him problems since before Christmas was revealed to be a cancer. He left this world with the love of his life, Chaz, right by his side. Her beautiful words can be read HERE. Blog-readers, I was truly heartbroken by the news.

     I obviously never knew Roger personally. I had read his reviews throughout the years but never paid him much more attention than any other critic. While attending Moody Bible Institute and going through a very difficult and transitory time in my life, I had few constants. I didn't even feel I could rely on myself. But Roger's reviews began to keep me company on sleepless nights. They helped me understand a lot of why I loved what I did about film -voicing what I felt but couldn't say and making sense when not much else at the the time did. Then I began to discover the man behind the reviews...

 

     Roger, though immeasurably knowledgeable about film, never wrote in an academic manner. It seemed that films were such an immensely personal experience for him that he couldn't write about them in the objective but rather only in the introspective. To read his reviews was to get to know him. From his musings on "predestination" to his anecdotes ranging from times shared with Chaz to his love of the cafes in Cannes, his writing was peppered with his personality through his distinctive authorial voice. As my desire to get to know him more increased, I began to read his blog: the instrument through which he re-claimed his voice after cancer took it from him. Though I began reading Roger to connect to something that I loved (cinema) and that seemed free of the unsurety that had come to infect most everything else I knew, even after I gave over my life's turbulence in exchange for the peace God had been offering me, I still found that though I no longer needed the consistency of Roger's weekly reviews, I wanted the companionship of his wise, provocative, and often vulnerable words. When he went off to Cannes or Toronoto, I would vicariously experience the festival through his blog-posts which were to me like postcards from a friend.

 

     Yes, I never knew Roger, but because of his bravery to stand firm and fight hard, his love-infused humility that refused to assumptively presume, and his fiery passion for film that infused every word he wrote, I felt a sort of kinship with him and he became a kind of friend to me. There are many who knew him better (or in fact at all), and surely many like myself who he touched with his words from a distance. Regardless of its ranking on the gradient of his inspiration, the way in which he impacted my life changed me for the better. And for that I am grateful. Thank you Roger Ebert for being my friend, my teacher, and no matter how old I get: who I want to be when I go grow up. You will be extremely missed by many, deeply so by me.

 

     And to Chaz, whose love and steadfast nature meant everything to Roger. You are on my heart, in my thoughts, and the subject of my intercessions. America and the world grieve your husband and are praying for you. Even at

My date & I at Opening Night

the glamorous Opening Night of the Sarasota Film Festival, Festival Director Tom Hall took a moment to remember Roger in his opening statements as he recalled the time when the two shared a dinner together. The theme from Roger's "favorite" movie The Third Man played as the audience exited the Van Wezel after the Q & A with Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (whose film has just received distribution through Magnolia) and a group of former SeaWorld trainers. Which brings us to my review of the Sarasota Film Festival's Opening Night Film:

 

Blackfish * * *

     *for a refresher on the explanation for each of my star ratings (zero through four), check out my post from last year's festival HERE.

 

 

     In Cowperthwaite's film, it is explained to the viewer that Blackfish's title comes from the name that Native Americans gave to the orca, an animal that they believed to possess deep spiritual power. Another title for the film could have been "Common Sense and Consequence", the words that resonate through one's mind as juxtaposing images of cliched '80s SeaWorld ads and eerily melancholy "horror underwater" scenes of orcas flash across the screen. The documentary's plotline loosely follows the story of the orca Tilikum who killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010. Through talking heads like neuroscientists and the like, the complex mental nature and social habits of orcas are explained. These "lessons on the psychology of orcas" clearly demonstrate that they are herd animals with a fascinating and unique communication system amongst themselves. They live in familial packs and adult offspring never leave their mother. Their socialization instincts even extend beyond their species and they are known to be notoriously friendly to humans; as one talking head stated, "There is no record of an orca doing harm to a human in the wild".

     Through this educational setup, the story of Tilikum's disquieting capture, inhumane captivity conditions, first attack on a human, and eventual transfer to SeaWorld that resulted in yet another attack comes about. Roger would frequently quote W.G. Sebold as having said, "Men and animals regard each other across a gulf of incomprehension", Cowperthwaite's experts suggest that anyone educated in marine biology respects said gulf and the orcas on the other side of it, fascinated by their majesty but respectful of their great power. It's curious then that SeaWorld trainers have no educational requirements, many former high school swim-team members who got the job right after graduation. The trainers who worked with Tilikum and others like him seemed to have been fed false information about orcas and how to interact with them (i.e. the orcas feel a real sense of relationship with their trainers and perform due to that, not just the buckets of food they are given). Many sensed that the way the orcas were treated wasn't right or natural (one trainer essentially admitted that it was easier to humanize the orcas instincts into emotions) but stayed at SeaWorld because (as one trainer said), "If I leave who's going to take care of Tilikum?". These trainers felt that their relationships with the orcas were symbiotic and that the orcas needed them just as they had grown to "need" the orcas.

     When Tilikum aggressively killed Dawn Brancheau, a spokesperson for SeaWorld stated that if Dawn were standing beside him she would agree that her death was the result of her own error and not a malicious attack. Employing very unsettling and often disturbing footage of actual violent attacks on humans by orcas in captivity, Cowperthwaite presents a compelling and sometimes even profound story -a well compiled amalgamation of truth that demands the viewer react but doesn't manipulate an outcome. Though some of what Cowperthwaite shows borders on exploiting human victims in the same way the orcas themselves are victims of exploitation, her editing decisions are justified in the interest of presenting a full picture of the facts. In the Q & A after the screening, Cowperthwaite shared that her 7 year old boys have indeed seen the film and that even if the footage of Brancheau's death wasn't tied up in litigation, she never would have used it..  She said "I wanted the story to take me wherever it took me..." and her film is best seen with that same mindset.

Q & A after the screening