On Top of the Whale is a 1982 Dutch surrealist/magical realistic fantasy film directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz while he was in exile and "...is one of his most delirious and ambitious hoax-like fictions".

Plot

The film unfolds as an ethnography and starts in the Netherlands at the beach, where Jean (a Dutch anthropologist) and his wife Eva meet a communist millionaire (Narciso), who later invites them over to his house in Patagonia to study the last two surviving Yachanes Indians. They accept the invitation and bring along their daughter Anita. Jean focuses his research on interpreting the language of the Indians, which has so far denied interpretation. At first they make a childish impression on the anthropologist, seeming to speak a language that consists of only one word: "yamascuma". A scene is shown where the anthropologist picks up several items, asking the Indians what their word is for each item. Every time they pronounce the word "yamascuma" in a different way, each enunciation having roughly 100 different prosodic patterns. The language seems to be reinvented daily and Jean struggles with his comprehension of it, reading its structure in a complex mathematical sense. Later, it is revealed that this in fact is a fake language when Jean accidentally leaves his tape recorder on in the presence of the Indians, recording a language that they do not use in front of anyone else.