With this simple title, the filmmakers sing the praises of the whale and warn against its imminent extinction if wide scale slaughter of the animal continues. This charming symbol provides a means for reading the fate of our planet, which the whale resembles for its density, roundness, and the threats surrounding it. The sustainability of an old form of whale hunting justified by the needs of a subsistence economy (and – though a moral point of view, but morality is at times the shadow cast by necessity – giving the animal itself a chance) was followed by industrial whale hunting with harpoon cannons, “the atomic bomb for whales”, and huge Japanese and Soviet ship-factories. This resulted in, for example, the mass slaughter of the blue whale.

Chris Marker’s commentary, tinged with irony and lyricism, warns us against the wild expansionism of our industrial society and denounces the threat created by a whale hunting industry that has lost its economic justifications and the purpose of which is merely to perpetuate itself. Enemies since time immemorial, at a certain point man and whale become united, and killing one endangers the other: “Each whale that dies communicates, like a prophecy, an image of our own death” (Chris Marker).