I am submitting this review for the reader to ponder for themselves the deeper riddle at work within this most worthy viewing. You have a whale who has taken it upon himself to make contact with humans and he does so effectively and efficiently and without effort too. He is no fair weather friend either as he comes and goes and staying faithful to his new found social skills and interactions. The humans involved do the same. Here is where I get a glimpse of what it may have been like before Adam & Eve fell from grace (and order) and from their training to be stewards of all the earth and how animals may have interacted with man quite naturally too before the fall. Ancient DNA is triggered within the viewer to recall how all things would have answered to man and willingly gravitate toward him because of the natural order of things and how we would respond. Today, we have the opposite in effect testifying to the fall of man where animals wisely avoid us. Even so, we make hell for them a reality seeking them out. This was definitely not our true calling but the fallen one of which we pursue without conscience or common sense. The stewards of the earth have gone missing and instead, we have a predator prey dynamic in its place. Now watch this special and consider what I have said. It will become self-evident. Good discussion and reflection here and food for the soul if choose to believe it

It made me so sad watching this movie. Sad to the point of tears, but even more so: angry. I simply can't believe how selfish humans can be. This poor baby Orca so badly wanted to be with his pod. Instead, humans insisted he remain their playmate. The DFO, upon the very first contact, should have relocated him to his pod (instead of three years later). The DFO lady interviewed in the film was thinking along the proper biological lines, but forgot to act upon them fast enough. It's not like his pod was unknown... his pod is known, identified, tracked, his birth was identified early on.

We relocate bears, wolves, cougars, reptiles, birds, we relocate all animals in need of their groups if they belong to species which aren't in excessive numbers. We even relocate them sometimes when they ARE in excessive numbers (certain birds, alligators).

But no, here the human greed to be able to say "I touched it" was more important than the Orca's need to be with his pod. The idiots in the movie kept talking about "friendship", but it wasn't friendship, it was "acquaintance" only! Luna wasn't looking for friendship in that superficial human way that we see on Facebook or between kids with cell phones. He needed the intense bonding 'friendship' of his pod, something no human on earth can possibly give him.

The death of Luna should loom heavily on the conscience of every single selfish citizen who fought to keep Luna away from his pod. It should also loom heavily on the government, for failing in its role of protector of wildlife.

Luna was essentially murdered by parasitic misguided human TLC. If we found a child in a shopping aisle (as the movie in the beginning compares),would we pass it along from human to human, for the human enjoyment of gooing and awing over it instead or returning it to its family? In some ways it reminds me of the little Cuban boy who landed in Florida a few years ago, and whom the community wanted to keep away from his family, in Florida, for political reasons... all the while his father in Cuba wanted him back. This poor kid got jostled around the legal system for over a year before he was returned to his Cuban family.

I just (December 2011) got back from watching this at a nearby art-house theater. Too bad its distribution seems so limited, as it's truly excellent. It could be used in a school classroom to prompt discussions about what is consciousness and what does it mean to communicate with aliens. In a theater, it can either entertain and delight, or leave viewers with plenty to ponder.

Several relationships with the whale are described as far deeper than one would have with a typical pet (a dog for example). Questions around just what it really means to be "friends" with another species are very much in the foreground throughout the film.

The photography is stunning. The shots of landscape and water alone would thrill; lots of shots of different boats -both powered and rowed- and of floating logs for lumber and of people -both groups and individuals- come along with the mix too. But that's not all - there are also amazing closeups of whale-human interactions, whale-boat interactions, and more generally the whale under water. Initially I thought they were fancy special effects shots that were filmed only with great difficulty after lots of careful planning. I expected stand-in whales to be used, and was rather discombobulated when the narration made a point of saying every individual whale could be identified by its pattern of spots. But it turns out the shots are not staged or subbed at all; they're just plain real; this really is a documentary.

Just the shots of huge decorated native canoes with singing rowers traveling over these remote waters are worth the price of admission.

There are the whale sounds too. Sometimes they're featured, presented as listening to hydrophone recordings, clearly underwater. More often they're presented as just a completely natural and unremarkable part of some whale-human interactions, moving seamlessly from underwater to above and back.

The journalists who took the pictures are shown almost exclusively in or near boats. So you might expect all the shots to be from boat height. But it's much more varied than that. Somehow there are shots from a great height (did they climb all day, or use a helicopter?) and very long shots along with all the closeups and the underwater photography.

Pacing and sequencing are excellent. You won't be gripping the edge of your chair, but you won't stop wishing to find out "what happened next?" either - the experience stays comfortably in the middle. No violence nor blood is ever shown, and the one bit about an injury avoids closeups and goes by quickly.

Inevitably different people have different ideas about how to treat the whale. There's more than one idea about how to "be kind". We even briefly see a completely different point of view: that the whale is just plain an unwanted nuisance or interruption and the whole situation should just somehow be made to "go away". The film is scrupulous about _not_ taking sides, about presenting _all_ the different points of view and not commenting on _any_ of them. When a boat trip was described as a "reconciliation", I was initially puzzled about just what had happened to split people so far apart they needed reconciling; the disagreements -although described quite adequately- do _not_ suffuse the feeling of the film.

Despite the film's even-handedness, for myself (most likely it's a personal predisposition) I couldn't help concluding that the government bureaucracy had spent an awful lot of money -remaining politically correct at every point- but failed miserably to achieve their big goal of avoiding injury to either humans or animals. Further, it seemed to me they never ever managed to realize they had "egg on their face" and looked awfully silly.