In the Poetics, Aristotle favors the unity of a single driving plot and a central conflict as it concentrates energies and offers the greatest possibility for catharsis. Episodic narratives are considered inferior, because energies disperse through multiple self-contained plots. 

While seeming to take extreme efforts at filtering subjectivity, the authors of the documentary are also withholding crucial information: what was the "violent unknown event" and why the use of an acronym "V.U.E."? The entry point, the first few minutes of the film, sets up a narrative mystery and raises questions about the authenticity of the narration. The V.U.E acts as a traditional McGuffin, a plot element that will do much to sustain (and strain) narrative interest and focused attention throughout the 182 minute film. To uncover the mystery of V.U.E, the viewer must pay attention to an abundance of visual and verbal evidence from a very long, digressive and contingent documentary about the victims, and imaginatively fill in missing data. Despite the attempts to categorize and order events into controlled narrative systems, a human trait the film mocks, the documentary erupts in a comic excess of linguistic and cinematic styles — a kind of semantic chaos similar to the violence of the event itself.

The entry point is an interactive timeline. But unlike most timelines, it is designed not to reveal too much at once, even that it is a timeline. At the macro-level we see patterns of color.  Curiosity and attention peaks by a slow reveal of data at the micro level, the photo slideshow. This slow reveal interface makes “The Whale Hunt” an interesting model for fictional databases that must work to sustain narrative interest through a modular, nonlinear presentation. Putting together the micro and macro levels of information, the user quickly understands how to navigate at leisure. The depth, scale and structure of the database and the level of control over the navigation is communicated intuitively and effortlessly. The color at the macro level gives clues about emotional content at the micro level.

As interface design, the entry point does not communicate narrative so much as invite the user to explore details in order to uncover narrative. As a non-fiction form about a single event, "The Whale Hunt" does not need to map plot elements. Unity is given in the action, the participants and the setting of the hunt and all of these can be further filtered and explored at stunning levels of granularity.