(Sixth in the series Superpod One – Where It All Began)
The story of Luna, the wayward orca, is well known. So, it’s not giving away the ending of this movie to say that his search for friendship among the humans he followed around came to a sad end one day, five years ago.
But the story of his life leading up to that fateful day is told poignantly by Mike Parfit and Suzanne Chisolm in their movie, The Whale, which opens on September 16. They showed us a preview this evening.
The story begins in Nootka Sound (pictured above), off the west coast of Canada, in 2001, when the young whale became separated from his family, the L pod.
Nootka Sound is a remote waterway that winds its way inland from the Pacific to one of the old logging towns up the river and the L pod often hangs out there on their salmon fishing expeditions.
When the pod returned to Puget Sound without Luna and his uncle, Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research and other scientists speculated that the missing whales may have been fishing together when the uncle died. But no one really knows what happened.
Luna was only a year old, very young for animals who routinely live into their 60s or 70s and who don’t mature until they’re at least 20. What happened to him was like a human child finding himself alone and lost.
Fortunately for him, Luna had at least learned to catch his own food.
Orcas are social animals who need each other’s company. So, Luna did the next best thing to finding his own family: he started making friends with the humans who come and go on their boats in Nootka Sound.
Luna the celebrity
In the years that followed, the young whale attracted thousands of tourists who came to visit him. And he sparked a major dispute, involving the Canadian government, the whale protection groups and the marine circuses.
The government tried in vain to stop humans from accepting the friendship of Luna. The orca protection groups wanted to work with the young whale so that he would bond temporarily with them, enabling them to lead him back to his family.
And the marine parks came up with all manner of schemes to try to “save” Luna so they could put him on public display. As an already-friendly whale who would also have been good for breeding, he would have been a huge prize, and at a minimal price.
The dispute continued for about five years while Luna befriended different people and groups, only to be baffled when they would suddenly stop reciprocating his friendship because of orders from the government.
In the end, one day when Luna was frolicking around the back of a tugboat and trying to make friends with the people on board, he was injured by the propeller and did not survive.
An allegory of human behavior
It’s a story about a whale. But it’s also a powerful allegory about human behavior: the special interests with dollar signs flashing in their eyes; the government bureaucracies trying to protect their turf and play by their own rulebook; the orca groups and scientists who knew exactly what to do to get Luna back to his family but could never get the government cooperation they needed; the fishermen who were afraid that Luna would eat “their” fish; and all the tourists and other visitors who wanted to play with him and have their photo taken with him but who would then move on or be stopped by the government – all of them leaving one very confused young animal in their wake.
Mike and Suzanne are not simply the producers of the movie; they know the story intimately since they were also involved in trying to save Luna. But they don’t try to propagandize. They’re expert enough moviemakers to know that the story is far more powerful when just told straight. And the result is a movie that’s moving and memorable.