The Whalebone Box — The Whalebone Box(Blu Ray)

The Whalebone Box is a film by Andrew Kötting, from 2019. It documents the returning of a box, made of whalebone, and gifted to the author Iain Sinclair by the sculptor Steve Dilworth, from London to the Isle of Harris on the Scottish coast where the whale which provided the raw material was found. 

Sinclair's writings are often characterised by deep excavations and evocations of history, and the sense and meaning of place; standing in a spot and examining its past, Sinclair then compresses those different layers, folds them into the present. The past follows us wherever we go. Alongside this examination of time, Sinclair also maps out the hidden and lost aspects of territories, highlighting and deciphering the psychogeographical elements of the landscape into patterns that exert unseen influence on the present-day - even when they've been tarmac'd over... All of these ventures combine history, folklore, literature, and poetics into visionary commentaries which follow in the footsteps of William Blake's ecstatic/hellish reveries. Whilst it's neither especially ecstatic nor hellish, The Whalebone Box is constructed in this vein. The film is about 80 minutes long, and largely constructed piecemeal from short snippets of film and photographs of varying format and quality. The narrative is linear, in the sense that it presents a path leading northwards across the UK, but deliberately wayward, convoluted and obscure: that’s the nutshell review there. If you have someone you hate in your life who despises arty experimental films, you have found their birthday present this year. 

So The Whalebone Box is a collage, flitting between videoed conversations, monologues, travel footage, and plenty of stock footage. This flow is regularly interrupted by short set-pieces using animated digital photos, which look rather out of place and at times comical. Sonically, these images are overlaid with contesting narrations, commentaries, and audio from old films; these, in turn, are underscored by drones, skittering beats, and plenty of reverb. In practice, the film is an overload of information, constantly attempting to be arresting, telling you that something interesting is happening, and that things are becoming more exciting and intriguing; however, it often amounts to mere overload, which smothers more than stimulates. The apparent aim of constructing a narrative around the box and its journey is often very creative, but it perhaps results in the documentation of a thought process so singular that it resonates wider with difficulty. Whilst it is undoubtedly dreamlike and visionary, it teeters with its own self-importance; however, this sense of self-worth is undercut by passages that border on parody, as well as informal chats, and monologues that are sometimes told as if they might be jokes. So, the film does play with notions of how it might be interpreted by an audience, but remains unresolved, and not in a provocative manner. The film does contain plenty of worthwhile material, not least some interjections from Phillip Hoare, but requires several viewings to get a firm grip on proceedings, making it somewhat of an endurance test… 

The blu-ray also features numerous short films, most of which dig deeper into the worst excesses of The Whalebone box - and drag Toby Jones into the proceedings - but A Walk Back To The Last London By Way Of Watling Street is an engaging and interesting psychogeographical meditation on history and landscape (whereas Acrophobia is truly the triumph of terrible CGI over an interesting idea and image). As should be obvious by now, The Whalebone Box is an object to be pondered over, and deciphered - much like the eponymous box - and the full release (I have merely the disc before me) is indeed accompanied by a 40-page booklet with writings on the film. I have enjoyed Iain Sinclair’s writings, and remain intrigued by his ideas, but The Whalebone Box is most certainly a strenuous commitment.