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The Islands and the Whales | Film Review
****
Dir: Mike Day
Faroe Islands, 12A, 1hr 21 mins
It’s not often you hear about a film depicting life in the Faroe Islands. It is after all, just a small archipelago of about 50,000 people situated in the middle of the North Sea, but few places remain as startlingly and ethereally beautiful. It feels remiss to start off praising this documentary for how it looks, but it’s pure visual sumptuousness is worthwhile. Then again, point a good camera anywhere in the Faroes and you’ll probably find something beautiful.
However, for all of the beauty of this limited-release doc, it does have a clear and present purpose – to depict the societal crossroads that the Faroe Islands currently stands at, especially in regards to the hunting of seabirds and whales, and the effect this is having on the health of the Faroese and the local environment. There are a number of various issues interwoven here; pollution in our oceans means that the whales (and fish in general) now come with abnormally high mercury levels. A culture tied closely to the eating of whale then, has to come to terms with the fact that it is poisoning itself, and there is a battle between medical professionals and conservative, stubborn Faroese. Additionally, local seabird populations have plummeted, and those that remain are too poisoned with plastic and mercury. The hunting of whale and seabird, on an island where very little grows in the way of edible vegetation, has long been a community endeavour, with entire villages joining together, as this has been, for hundreds of years, the only means of survival on the island. What a society stands to gain health-wise, it may lose in community cohesion.
Director Mike Day handles all these varying strands with sensitivity and nuance. There are no easy answers here, on an island chain where less than 100 years ago there were no roads or electricity. The sea gives sustenance, but it also poisons. Tradition rubs against natural conservation. For those squeamish about animal harm onscreen, The Islands and the Whales does feature many instances of the killing of whale and bird, but it never revels in it, instead balancing its cruelly commercial matter-of-factness with the necessity of survival and sustenance.
The main misstep in the film is the arrival of the Sea Shepherd group – a number of rich Western environmentalists, led by Pamela Anderson of all people, who arrive on the Faroes to tell everyone to be vegetarian. Whilst no doubt such groups are a pain in reality, revelling in their self-importance and cultural imperialism (and the only reason they don’t do the same things in, say, African countries is because it’s politically incorrect to do so), their presence in the film serves to simplify and flatten out some of the nuances of the core debate here, which is the fine line one has to toe between the necessity of natural conservation and the necessity of sustenance in a land as distant as remote as the Faroes. Of course, the irony is that it’s those same environmentalist Westerners who are responsible for poisoning the whale meat with mercury. A beautiful, well-timed documentary, surely also worthwhile for any Blue Planet devotees out there.
words FEDOR TOT