On Top of the Whale

The film is built as a parody of anthropology, of linguistics and of cultural imperialism. A team of linguists who have nothing in common goes into the wilds of an invented Patagonia. Their aim is to study the last speakers of a dying language. What emerges is this: the language consists of a single word, and therefore that word means everything. The account does not leave the discovery as a joke; it puts scientific method itself on trial. How trying to understand somebody else’s language turns into a form of possession is the real subject. Raúl Ruiz’s way of breaking and rebuilding an account keeps working here as well. Willeke van Ammelrooy and Jean Badin appear in the ninety seven minute Dutch film, completed in 1982.