The Loneliest Whale: Doc on Famed Solitary Leviathan Bathes Oceans in Dazzling Light

By Kim Hughes

Rating: A

It’s hard to visualize the viewer who would not be at least mildly captivated by The Loneliest Whale, which sets noted documentarian Joshua Zeman and a bunch of whip-smart, clear-eyed scientists on a hunt for the so-called 52 Hertz whale, believed to have spent its entire life in solitude calling out at a frequency higher than those of other whales, notably giant blue and fin whales, who can hear but not understand the calls. Hence the name 52 Hertz.

Certainly, executive producers and established environmentalists Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrian Grenier reckon the story of a tirelessly roaming but sad (maybe?) bachelor whale will thrill viewers while compelling them to rethink their relationship with our oceans and its creatures as they are beguiled by the eerily beautiful deep-water whale sounds scoring the film’s action.

It’s a safe bet. The Loneliest Whale is gripping and highly persuasive, blending hard science with real-life action/adventure sequences, talking-head interviews, and — sorry, sorry — a whale of a true story that has been headline news for years.

To wit: a 2004 New York Times piece chronicling the research paper, "Twelve Years of Tracking 52-Hz Whale Calls From a Unique Source in the North Pacific," published in December of that year by Deep Sea Research and “sparking interest well beyond the usual small circle of oceanographers.

“The paper reported that for many years, a whale had been cruising the Pacific from central California to the Aleutians, calling out with a voice unlike any other whale’s, and getting no response,” the Times wrote. “The call, possibly a mating signal, suggests that the animal lives in total, and undesired, isolation.”

First heard in 1992, 52 Hertz had been tracked ever since with underwater microphones the Navy uses to listen for enemy submarines. The story eventually landed on filmmaker Zeman’s radar. When a series of events pointed to the possibility that 52 Hertz was still alive, Zeman and a team of experts and researchers set off to find it. The Loneliest Whale follows that journey, likened to finding a needle in a haystack. Oceans, after all, are vast and deep.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Along the way, man’s complicated and mostly brutal relationship with the planet’s largest mammal is explored, from Melville’s Moby Dick through to the devastating whaling industry of the 19th and 20th centuries to American biologist and environmentalist Roger Payne’s famous 1967 discovery of whale song among humpback whales which became a smash-hit record, and which literally changed the world’s collective mind about — and crucially, comportment towards —whales overnight.

(For more on the history and lifestyle of whales, specifically sperm whales, and their extraordinary relationship to other whales and our world, check out ecologist/author Carl Safina's excellent and very readable Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace).

The Loneliest Whale also includes terrifically interesting nerd details: the difference between how sound moves in air and under water; the impact of global shipping on sea creatures, especially those using sonar to transmit crucial information about mating, predators, and food supplies; and of course, a digression on whether whales can feel lonely in a way we understand.

Zeman — who similarly placed himself in the thick of his acclaimed 2009 doc, Cropsey — and the assembled team of scientists are clearly smitten both with 52 Hertz and with the species in general. That tends to happen when you learn more about their intricate personal lives and complex communications, their fierce maternalism and life-or-death fealty to their pods. The planet’s oceans are pretty thrilling to view and conceptualize, too.

In addition to the grand hunt, which is at times white-knuckle exciting, The Loneliest Whale and its subject are positioned as a metaphor for our own relationships to our world. What’s clear from the film is that our connection to our oceans — giant, mysterious, and remarkably, less understood than distant planets — is glorious and precarious in equal measure. That goes double for whales. We lose them at our peril.

The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52. Directed by Joshua Zeman. Available now in select theatres and digital and on-demand on July 16.