Whaledreamers

Director Kim Kindersley is passionately committed to his cause and a good cause it is, but his film is a lightweight New Age ramble about the plight of whales and dolphins, his own spiritual journey and the wisdom of indigenous cultures that barely deserves the classification of documentary. Narrated by Jack Thompson it is based around a gathering of elders from tribes from Hawaii, Congo, the US, Indonesia, Colombia and New Zealand in Miranangu Bay, a spot frequented by whales, tribal totem.of the Mirning people of Australia's Southern coast

Although the message is similar to 2009's The Cove, Kindersley offers little to engage our attention as his film meanders across a variety of  topics as the elders make their way to the meeting. Which is not to say that a documentary needs to have a dramatic form to be interesting but there is little here that we don’t already know other than the specific story of the Mirning tribe, who were displaced when the government gave their ancestral lands to a tribe whose own lands were poisoned by above-ground nuclear testing. A litany of the white man's blighted passage across the face of Mother Earth, Thompson’s earnest narration does nothing to enliven what is a well-meant but ultimately laboured film.

 

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