It's sad that only two movies have been made from the works of Farley Mowat, Canbda's master storyteller. Never Cry Wolf is much better.
This movie whitewashes a rather complex situation. Good outsider v. evil locals. The truth is that Mowat comes across as a bit of a jerk in the book. Many of the locals resent the attention he brought to their small coastal Newfoundland town. And I can't say I blame them.
Was the way the locals treated the whale wrong? Admittedly, yes, but the impression I had was that Mowat turned the locals into proxies for the entire wasteful and somewjhat criminal whaling industry. The Newfoundland locals didn't hunt whales and, for the most part, lived somewhat in harmony with nature. They didn't overfish and lived fairly simple lives.
They shouldn't have shot at the whale, but whales getting caught in coves was pretty rare. Mowatt himself admitted that. And there was a pretty good chance the trapped whale would have starved to death anyway.
The locals behaved horribly to the whale, but in the grand scheme of things they proved over and over again that they were not the bad guys.
Skip the movie. Read the book.
Review of A Whale for the Killing
