Samson & Sally

Samson & Sally (a.k.a. Samson & Sally: The Song of the Whales) is a Danish feature-length animated film made in 1984. It was directed by Jannik Hastrup and based on the novel The Song of the Whales by Danish author Bent Haller. The story is darker than most animated films of the time.

The film revolves around a young albino male Sperm whale named Samson who strongly believes the legendary tales of Moby Dick. The legends say that Moby Dick was a hero for all whales, and that he will someday return. He meets Sally, a young black-and-white female sperm whale who is orphaned after her pod is slaughtered by whalers. Samson's pod adopts Sally and she befriends Samson even though she does not believe in Moby Dick. Samson and Sally together survive certain dangers, such as killer whales, a massive oil slick, radiation poisoning, and whaling ships, which they refer to as "iron beasts." Eventually Samson and Sally fall in love with each other. Samson's mother is later killed by the whalers, greatly upsetting Samson. Samson decides to leave Sally and his pod to search for Moby Dick and convince him to try to save whales from whalers and the "iron beasts." After nearly dying several times, due to humans causing water pollution, Samson finds Moby Dick in the underwater ruins of Atlantis, only to find that Moby Dick is senile, and too old to even forage for himself. Disappointed, Samson leaves to try to find his pod. After days of searching, he gives up all hope of finding his pod, just before seeing them on the horizon. The film ends with a scene set decades later, with Samson and Sally as adult whales, caring for a single son, whom Samson saves from a killer whale.

In one of the last scenes of the film Samson is swimming through the ruins of Atlantis. Throughout the film the characters refer to this city as "The City That Man Built". As he is leaving his encounter with Moby Dick he passes by The Statue of Liberty and the New York City Skyline both entirely underwater. Although a children's film this seems to indicate that they are living in some post-apocalyptic ocean on Earth. They also have large run ins with radioactive waste and other masses of pollution on huge scales. The film is a warning like all other post-apocalyptic stories. "Mankind is not viscious, mankind is stupid. Someday man will realize what he is doing. By killing everything in the sea he is killing himself. When the sea is dead mankind will die too." -Moby Dick