The Whalebone Box (2020) - full transcript

- …5 miles south of the Red Sand Tower

in shallow water,
apparently in need of assistance.

Over.

- The recorders themselves
are very robust.

They can take a deceleration
of 3,400G

over six and a half milliseconds.

- How do I know?

- To put that into context...

- Press and hold
the button or the menu buttons

to stop recording
and save at same time.

- Part One.



One.

- I love you inside out.

I love your bones,

and your blood, and your bile.

And I love the shape of your organs.

And the dark brown colour
of your liver.

And I love the sluice
and spill of your liquids.

But this is what reminds me

of the recent thing I watched

It's a dark web boxes

that you just order from the web.

You can give 200 pounds
and you don't know what is inside.

And inside, it might be
one of the dreams that you've lost

or one of the relatives
that is just dead.



I don't know.
Many things you can find inside.

It's that kind of box.

- Right,
that's six minutes then,

nothing else for you now.

Goodbye.

- Keeps artefacts

- I want you to try
and tell me about this man.

Is he always in black?

Because he knew the box
would be white,

he just wanted
to be the main character.

That's why he became invisible.

But I can't say why...

why he's so stubborn.

He's telling many things from inside
and he shouts it.

And he wants to tell things.

But with his face, with his mouth,

he thinks that
he shouldn't tell any of this

or he shouldn't mention this now.

He might have some knowledge
about this moment.

But maybe you will hear later
from him whoever who he is.

And two hands are
so different than each other, isn't it?

I mean, is he struggling with the...

I would say no.

But maybe he's a bit ashamed.

Like he has to do it
some kind of thing.

- Part Two.

- I asked him,
"Where the whalebone came from?"

And he said,
"It came from a washed up whale,

possibly a blue whale."

All sorts of ribs and vertebrae
along with racks of baleen sacrificed

after the whale had been smashed up
as a result of a storm.

And he then got the cord
that binds round the box.

He says that he took it
from a herring net

and he seems to remember that
it had bits of lead attached

that held it down under the water.

And the challenge of the box
comes from what's inside.

The sculptor took the fishing weights
and melted them in an old saucepan.

So he made this lead container,
filled with calm water,

contained in the whalebone box.

The whale actually is the box.

- Philip Hoare.
- Philip Hoare. Writer.

- Whalebone
is the heaviest bone

because it is so full of oil.

Do you imagine that
it should be light

and floating
like the bones of a bird?

But it's not.

And so it's the kind
of watery scaffolding

for this huge creature.

But I think the reason
why we like whales and dolphins

is they look a bit like us only zipped up
in whale or dolphin wetsuits.

I think a lot of it is
to do with the fact that in

pre-Darwinian, pre-modern times

the barriers between us

and other species
were not so demarcated

so that you could slip
in between species.

And there wasn't a lot of difference
between you and your animals.

And there was a lot more respect
for animals for that reason.

The first break in that came
when man could kill,

humans could kill remotely.

- This whale is dying.

It is carried by the people
from the sea to the beach.

It leaves the place
that it belonged to.

- The first image
I remember was a woman

in a forest with a gun.

It might have been 2018.

For me,
these are images of happiness.

- Easier said than done.

No, hold it up there
for a bit longer.

- Were we filming then?

What's wrong with you, man?

- How long does it take?

- What can you see?

What can you see?

- "Old man with wrinkled
female breasts, can see.

At the violet hour,

the evening hour
that strives Homeward."

- Do you think
he's happy, happy here?

- I would say so.
- Wouldn't you?

A pretty good spot.

- A bit cold
this time of year though.

- Cold this time of year,
but he can hear his beloved river

in the background some of the time.

- Are you sure
that's not the motorway?

- The motorway's
the other side.

I can think of getting him
into the pub,

which he was very fond of,

but he had a belief
in the Quaker thing of silence

and only using words
where it was essential.

Trimming the fat off,
getting to the musical essence.

- Yeah.

- It's very white on that side
and it's very...

The oils have come across
to that side for some reason.

Did you keep it upside down?

- No, I kept it
as it should be kept.

As was instructed.

- I'll go under this tree here
to give you...

- "Every birth a crime,
every sentence life.

No hope of going back.

Every sentence life,
every birth a crime.

Brief words are hard to find."

- Natural high...

like in the mountains.

High up.

High up.

Where are you, Mount Everest?

- In order for an object
to have a wavelength

it must extend
over some region of space,

which means it occupies
many positions at the same time.

It's only when the box is opened

that we see a single definite state
until then it's essential.

Half one thing and half the other.

- Where are you?

What can you see?

- In this brief transit
where the dreams cross,

let the other
you be shaken and reply.

- Where is she?

- Where the dreams cross...

- Hello.
- Mrs. Sinclair?

- Part Three.

- What's it doing up here?

- It's a whale like hump,
isn't it?

Responding transcendently

between the state of being on land
and returning to the ocean.

And the whiteness of the mountains

recalling the albino whiteness
of the white whale.

And gouged and wounded
and left with shreds of flowers.

So it's a place of enormous potency

and quiet and stillness.

- And is the mermaid
singing inside?

- Not yet. No.
- The mermaid is still in a way.

It's waiting to be taken out
onto the ocean

to travel back to the island

and the box is getting
much, much heavier.

Yesterday,
in England climbing in the fells,

it was light
and it was borne on the wind.

But today, it has the powerful weight
of the extreme ocean,

the depths and that voice

that McGillivray enchanted into it

is beginning to transform it
into another substance.

- There is no accident

just as there is no beginning
and no end.

- You're not hot?

- Can you see anything
through the goggles?

- What can you see?

- You can't see the past?

- Can you see lain?

Can you see lain
through the goggles?

- You can't see the past?

- Can you see the sea?

- What can you see?

- It knows what it is today.

- Can you put the film
back on?

Can you put the film back on?

Can you put the film back on,
Andrew?

- I found this piece of film.

It was in the belly of a whale.

And they pulled it out
through the whale's mouth.

- Its carvings...

- Its carvings...

- Convey...
- Convey...

- Messages.

- Messages.

- You can almost skew
your arguments of this iconography

to make it fit with the links
that you want to make

as you work around the casket.

As well as
the iconographies presented

by the individual panels

and the opportunities
for multivalency are rampant.

With this potential multivalency
firmly in mind,

multivalency being the ability
to see the same thing in many ways,

simultaneously…

- The condition
of the whale is reasonable.

It is in pretty reasonable condition.

You're through now. Go ahead.

- Hello, mum, it's me.

Have you had a lovely time?

- Quite dense forest,
sometimes heathland

sort of blasted heathland,
places you can still get lost

and they were reborn
and never to die again.

What is she doing in the forest?

Wearing clean clothes?

So she doesn't walk too much.

Maybe she came
with the armchair itself?

Because her clothes are very clean.

Or she's invisible maybe like a...

like an angel... like...

A bit of a naughty angel,
like maybe likes to shoot some...

I don't know.

Butterflies.

The question is... is she happy now?

Because she looks comfortable to me

as if this is her own nature.

- There are some of these

still flying around
on airplanes today.

- He heard them a coming,
he just...

Isn't it cold?
Isn't it cold?

And he just...

He heard them a coming he just,
isn't it cold?

- Nothing to authenticate
the mission imposed.

- Storms.

- What's it doing up here?

- Responding transcendently

between the state of being on land
and returning to the ocean.

And the whiteness of the mountains

recalling the albino whiteness
of the white whale.

We've found something in the ice.

We need some help down here.

Can anybody hear me?

We've found something.
We've found something.

We've found something.

- And that is the bit that
is designed to survive the crash.

- As you can see
a very solid unit

made out of very high impact
resistant materials

and that is the bit that
is designed to survive the crash.

- Down into dust

and reeds at the patrolled bounds

where captives thicken to gaze.

Her eyes are looking down the...

camera, isn't it, to the...

So she's aware of...

There is someone watching her.

She's not alone.

There is bit sadness though.

- There is something sad
and melancholy about trips.

I always hate to go away.

But one has to find some new place

or it would be impossible to be sad
and melancholy again.

- What's in the box?

What's in the box?

- I'm going to open it.

- When I said I admired you,
I meant what I said.

Curiosity killed the cat
and it certainly would have you

if you had followed
your impulse to open it.

- Exclusive devotion
to melancholia leaves no room

for interest in the outside world.

- Part Two.

- But why here?
- Why are we here?

- Well, we're here
because this is the plug

of the entire mythological system

and I had to come here
to disprove the mythology.

I'd been haunted by a place
I didn't know

and coming to the real place
you're overwhelmed

by the geographical particulars
the bite of the wind,

the howling of the dogs in the woods,

and the realisation of the paucity

of my own imagination
couldn't stand up to this.

And all the time for so many years,

right back to the beginnings
of everything I've written,

this Montségur
has been at the heart of it.

And how does a physical visitation

manage to live up to that?

- Anyway
let's take her up to the top.

- You mean just past
where it says forbidden?

Yes, wherever it says forbidden

that's where we need to go.

- Because the cantos
of Ezra Pound,

he visited here on a walking tour
with TS Eliot.

That the body of light come forth
from the body of fire

and that your eyes come
to the surface

from the deep wherein
they were sunken

that your eyes come forth
from their caves

and the stone eyes
again look seaward.

Guard this portal
and the cellular Montségur.

Wow.
That's the iconic image of Montségur.

- Wow.

Get away from the edge.

- Teach us to sit
still even among these rocks.

Slither companions.

Pardon me, sir.

What is it?

- I don't know.
- But whatever it is keep away.

Don't let anybody near it.

- Yes, sir.

- Part Three.

- Stop valve open,
number four.

- And as the needle
of the syncrenoscope

reaches the upright position

another giant machine
has sprung to life.

- He just doesn't want
synchronised sound.

I mean,
from what I've seen all he wants,

is pure abstract image.

He's just going to extract.

This is the total bloody fascism
of the director.

He just doesn't want to hear
anything that I have to say

or anybody else has to say

which is why every time
he fucks it up.

I mean, unconsciously,
if nothing else.

They're going to just make a film
of pure images

and then they'll just think, well,

we'll add a few words
here and there.

Great music,
I've got this great rap track.

And they'll just put
their own soundtrack on.

And I mean, let's face it
with a different soundtrack.

It could be any
1 of 50 different movies.

- Baby, baby, baby,
where did our love go?

- Was that too loud?

Do you want me to turn it down a bit?

- Yeah.

- Baby, baby, baby,
where did our love go?

Don't you leave me this way.

Don't you leave me this way.

Baby, baby, baby,
where did our gloves go?

- Where did the whale go?

- In her head.

She's imagined the whale in her head.

- Okay.

She is dreaming about the box.

But the box is a real thing.

And I've also seen in the pictures

that she was holding a gun

to hunt a whale in her mind.

But it's happening in the reality.

And this one could be...

This box made by paper

could be the whale box in her dream.

But not the real one,
but in her dream.

- And what is your name?

- My name is Kyunwai So.

But everybody call me "Paper".

So it's by the ocean?

- No.

- Where did the whale go?

- In her head.

She's imagined the whale in her head.

- Okay.

- And she shot the whale
in her head

to make a box
from the bone of the whale.

- Uh-huh.

But if she hunted the whale
in her head...

where did she get the whale bone?

- From the dead whale.

- In her mind?

- Yes.

- Wow!

- Words.

- Memory,
a scrap of language,

lines of verse
that cannot be translated...

time past or future visions.

- Try to forget.

Try to forget. Try to forget.

Try to forget...

- I'm going to open it.

- And with the idea the person
who made it

that it was
a sort of meditation device

that you would use
in times of sickness,

and it almost looked like
a model building.

It was this beautiful
casket-shaped thing.

- The road again.

And using sound creatively,

off screen sound
as well as diegetic sound

simply as a means of documenting
what's in front of the camera.

- What can you see?

- You just find
the right place to go,

and that's always a sight
within the forest.

There might be a rock over there
that would allow you access

to the time
of your great-grandfather,

to the moment in the garden.

There might be a waterfall over there

which allows you to the time
of your mother's childhood.

There are places you go to,
to access time.

The ghosts come into the forest.

And at that point,
linear time begins.

- And there would be
a voice that would say.

All right, roll them.

Action.

And cut.

And what is this woman doing?

- I'm not sure.

It depends on the gun,
is real or fake.

- It's a real gun.

- It's a real gun.

So maybe she is hunting?

Is she alone
or is somebody with her?

- I'm with her.
- I'm photographing her.

- Mm-hm.

- What has she got
on her head?

- Her head.

- Did you jump again?

- Yeah.

- Right,
now put your gun down

and one last look through
your binoculars.

- Or she's invisible
maybe like a...

like an angel... like...

A bit of a naughty angel,
like maybe likes to shoot some...

I don't know.

Butterflies.

Not too bad though,
but might be a bit naughty.

- And if you open this box,

you don't know whether good magic
will come out...

Or bad magic will come out.

- Like Pandora?

- Like Pandora's box.

- Pandora's box.

- Philip Hoare.
- Philip Hoare. Writer.

I mean, the whale has become
the new psychic symbol

of the new age.

And ever since we first put
our hydrophone

into the water off Bermuda,

which is the Island
of Strange Noises of the Tempest.

Ever since then
we've invested the whale

with the new sense of the New Age.

It's always the whale
that encompasses

that because the whale
is the liminal breacher.

It literally and figuratively
and psychically breaches

between those dimensions.

- You should
have been called Pandora.

She had a curiosity about a box
and opened it

and let loose
all the evil in the world.

- Never mind
about the evil what's in it?

I just want to know what it is.

Would you believe me if I told you?

Would you be satisfied?

- Maybe.

- I love the spring.

I'm very pleased when the winter
and the snow has gone by.

I love the spring.

- And so to ask Philip first,
what was the particular qualities

that caused
these transcendent visions

to descend
on this part of the world?

- Philip Hoare.
- Philip Hoare. Writer.

I knew that there witches
in the New Forest,

I knew that there still were.

My mother told me.

So I connected that
with Mary Ann Girling's witchery,

and that connects
with that extraordinary tower.

Sway Tower, Peterson's Tower,
built as a monument

as a lighthouse to the
psychic science of spiritualism

and animal magnetism
and all these other weirdness

of the bohemian spiritual New Age.

Two hundred and sixty people

dropped out of the sky.

- Putting this box
against the power of the tower

that Peterson made to communicate

with the sounds of the cosmos.

He built it out of concrete,
but by ascending to the top

he would hear the hum
of the universe.

He would hear this zzzz mmmaaammmm

And he would chant against it

and maybe he would hear the angels,

the angels of wrath around him.

And I think that
by bringing the box here

we can maybe recharge it

from that kind of
insane angelic energy.

- And God prepared
a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

Now behold Jonah.

Taken up as an anchor.

- Which to him looked like
the shape of a whale

rising up out of the countryside.

- The whale leaves
that huge body of water

which contains 90%
of the bio mass of this planet.

And leaps out into the universe

as a kind of astral
extra planetary whale.

It becomes the futuristic symbol

of the backward abyss of time.

As Prospero says in the Tempest.

- Part Four.

- Steve Dilworth
who made the whalebone box

has always been
a difficult person to question.

He never gives you the why.

He talks about the opportunity
of getting the whalebone from a whale

that was washed up
on the Isle of Harris,

and he makes this object,

but then the object
takes on a life of its own.

And what's fascinating is that

Eden Kotting has to go to sleep.

She has to put herself
into a hallucinated

almost amniotic fluid state of dream.

Like creatures floating
through the forest.

The forest is now underwater.

- Where are you?

Can you see the past?

What can you see?

- You're fucking
English wankers.

- At the instant
before the box is opened,

the cat is equal parts alive
and dead at the same time.

- Turn and look at me.

- This is an animal
that we need to try

and get off the south coast
of the UK.

- All ships, all ships.

This Oban Radio, Oban Radio.

- Where are you now?

- I'm at the end
of a long black tunnel

in which I can see
a pinprick of light

generally taken
to be the spark of mortality.

And it's moving.
Moving everywhere.

- I was trying to remember
how old you were

when you did have this done, Eden.

- When she was first born?

- Yes, I would have said
three or four months old.

- She was virtually blind
when she was born.

- Okay.

- So there was a lot
of learning to see

in those first few years.

- Wasn't there, Eden?
- Yeah.

- The back of the brain
was saying,

"What is going on out there?

What does it all mean?"

- And if you want to go back
somewhere in memory,

you just find the right place to go.

- Right now
look through your goggles.

Eden.

And lean right back
and look up at the sky.

Higher.

Right back. Higher. Higher.

Try and look at the sky
through the goggles.

- Can you see the sky?
- Can you lean a bit further back?

That's it.
Put them right over your eyes.

- The women would go
into the trees.

The trees absorb the women.
And the women are the trees.

- And that's why the forest
is much more supportive as an entity.

The forest
is a single organic entity.

He might have some knowledge.

More than you know.

That's the homicide squad.

Complete with detectives
and newspaper men.

Nobody important really

just a movie writer with a couple
of B pictures to his credit.

The poor dope,
he always wanted a pool.

- I'm increasing
the load on the machine.

- It looks like the box
is very heavy.

Yeah.
But what is inside?

I'm very curious.

I think he doesn't know
what is in the box, right?

And why is he holding it?

- I mean, if we've got
the box slap down there

obviously for a set up shot.

It's good to have a bit
of a sense of it

being moved around the landscape.

- You're beginning
to think like a filmmaker,

aren't you?

- I was trained in that way.

- You're back in Brixton,
all those years ago.

- In the days that
we were thinking about

crossing the line
and all those things.

There was a grammar of cinema
in those days,

no messing about with phones.

- This isn't a phone.
- It's a 16mm camera.

- Watch out.

- Memories are always
simultaneously objectively false

and subjectively true.

- Try to forget.

Try to forget. Try to forget.

Try to forget.

- The whalebone box
is returning

because it's a finite earth battery
made of whalebone

and beeswax and honey and lead
and it needs to be renewed

and also there's a degree
of sickness and unwellness

on the Isle of Harris

and we need to bring
the energies of the box

which have accumulated over

more than 30 years back to source,

to see if the calm water

that was put into it
still is efficacious

in bringing health back to the body.

- Nostalgia effectively is a longing

for a reunion with the homeland,

and the strange reality
that is confronted.

- At your service.

That the wheat be cut
and that the sheep be sheared.

That great hammers
and drills may pound and labour.

That homes may be run
with simplicity

cleanliness and economy.

That life be made easier.

- But it was as
if this was the landscape

that revealed that
the people themselves felt that

what was worthwhile was in the land
and not in the buildings.

They had a deep attachment to place,

but not to the specific structures
that had been put on the place.

And the box was brought back

to this household
from which it had started

many, many years ago.

- There is nothing
that cannot be used

as an ad hoc folly.

As a Felicity Beacon,
as an iconically iconic icon...

and there is apparently
no one on the island

who is immune to the appeal
of the found object

and the oxidising object.

- Deformity and disrepair
of architectural construction

signify the ultimate impossibility
of translation.

- It was a very serious
life and death thing

as if I was creating
some sort of a monster.

A bit like somebody tinkering around

and making some sort of bomb
without realising it.

It was that sort of feeling.

A lot of people will come up
and start inspecting it

and then they gradually realise
what the thing is about.

It is quite dry and they think
it's some sort of paper.

It's when gradually
it dawns on people

what the thing is that other
sorts of questions may appear.

A lot of people will come up
and start inspecting it.

I don't know what it was,
but it felt like a very potent thing

and it was a very serious
life and death thing.

- So what was there
you couldn't tell us

it was a ruin from the 1950's
or if it was something

that went right back to the age
of the standing stones at Callanish.

It was extraordinary.

And each of these
encounters reinforces

your own sense of self
as to who you are.

The person dissolves into the place.

The place completely overwhelms
the sense of your own identity.

And so essentially you give up
that identity

and you become
part of something bigger than you.

We're temporary,
we're in this long dialogue

with our ancestors
and with those who follow us.

The living can assist
the imagination of the dead.

The dead are constantly prompting us.

And I think in any form of writing
that all you do is fill

in a couple of sentences
between what was not quite finished

and what is just being begun.

And I think that's the same thing
with death and mortality.

Essentially, you would look
to the point of dissolving

into something grander
rather than being put in a box

and nailed down in a particular spot.

It's much better to be on the move,
to be flowing and floating.

- Hello. Mr Sinclair?

I'm going to open it.

- When I said I admired you,
I meant what I said.

- It has found a place to live.

Inside.

Where no one can see it
or hear it, or feel it.

- I know I'm human.
- Some of you are still human.

This thing doesn't want
to show itself

it wants to hide
inside an imitation

I'm going to open it.

- It will fight if it has to,
but it's vulnerable.

I'm going to open it.

- The tail of the plane broke off.

It fell...

- We need some help down here.

- Part Five.

- What can you see?

Where are you?

Do you shoot butterflies?

Tthis box was opened

and waves of excitement
passed through the audience

as I cut the steel bands.

The box contained the most
extraordinary collection of objects.

Very curious.

This is the most interesting exhibit.

Well, I have shown you
the very curious contents of the box,

but I'm afraid that
there was nothing in it

to save the nation
in a time of emergency.

- And I see a whale
on the beach.

It looks going to die.

- I think the image that

I just saw is the memory
inside a bomb.

- You think it's a bomb?
- Yeah.

- Because the box
is made by people.

Made by humans.

They use the bomb to make the box.

But the memory is belongs
to the bomb.

Not the box.

♪ You must sleep my love ♪

♪ You must sleep ♪

♪ You must sleep my love ♪

♪ You must sleep ♪

♪ You must sleep my love ♪

♪ You must sleep... ♪

- Where we are who knows.

Guesses where we go.

- And maybe the treasure
that they speak of is nothing actual.

It's not this box.

It's nothing
that's buried in the sand.

It's nothing
that's hidden in a cave.

It's that strange state
of consciousness

that you can achieve
out of your own confusions.

We don't want any record
of precisely where it is.

I'm not going to say where it is
other than it's on the west side

of the Island of Harris.

There is a lot of that,

so you'd have to do
a lot of digging to find her.

- I think the tide
is going to take her away anyhow.

- I think another hour,
she will be under water.

- In the shallow brackish
waters of the tidal Thames,

the stricken mammal
was out of its depth.

The 20 foot whale lost
and disorientated in the currents.

But finally,
it was coaxed onto the foreshore.

Well, there's still a lot of care

and there's still a lot of work
to be done yet with this animal.

The animal now
is in an even more alien environment

from where it has been
for the last few days.

Maybe this is moving now.

But obviously,
it's been in the shallow area

for the last couple of days.

Now it's not even in the water,

but it's moving, we're on our way.

And I think...

- I found this piece of film.

It was in the belly of a whale

and they pulled it out
through the whale's mouth.