From http://www.finalreel.co.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2015/10/Aaaaaaaah-Poster.jpg |
Director: Steve Oram
Screenplay: Steve Oram
Cast: Denise (Lucy Honigman); Barabara
(Toyah Willcox); Smith (Steve Oram); Keith (Tom Meeten); Og (Sean Reynard); Ryan
(Julian Rhind-Tutt); Jupiter (Julian Barratt)
Synopsis: In an alternative England, human beings are not that
different from primates, communicating in grunts, and interacting in crude and
even violent ways even when videogames and television still exist. One named Smith
(Steve Oram), mourning the loss of
his mate, travels with his friend Keith (Tom
Meeten) to the territory of Ryan (Julian
Rhind-Tutt). Ryan, with the help of Og (Sean
Reynard), became the new alpha-male of a home with an older woman Barabara
(singer Toyah Willcox) and her
daughter Denise (Lucy Honigman), not
impressed when Smith and Keith start to make themselves known. The original
alpha-male of the territory, Jupiter (Julian
Barratt), lays in an improvised den nearby, cherishing his beloved
Battenberg cake in misery of his lot.
I admit, if it becomes my
spiritual bias from my part, that my opinion on this is entirely my own
opinion, but if human beings did "devolve" back to a primitive state,
I seriously doubt we would return back to beasts. For me, the best of humanity
feels out of place even from evolution. And also the worst of humanity feels
alien even next to nature. In fact even the stupidity of mankind feels alien to
nature, no other animal as strange as we. Even our fore-apes would have not
been as bizarre as we can be. Steve Oram,
actor and here director/star/writer, depicts probably a far more credible
example of what would happen if mankind devolved in that, somehow, we would
still be able to fix a broken washing machine but we eat meat raw, attempt to
shag people randomly and piss up other peoples' refrigerators to mark
territory. Frankly a lot of this people
would get away with now if they had the chance.
Aaaaaaaagh! is surreal black comedy, intentionally absurd and with
a premise where, even if it does have
its own internal coherence , logic has to go out the window to appreciate it.
One of the best virtues of the film is that it reflects human behaviour out its
strangest would stand out even when the cast act like the casts of 2001: A Space Odyssey's prologue. It is
also the film where Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh and The Great British Bakeoff gets his
penis bitten off, so every base should be covered. A low budget film, Aaaaaaaagh! willingly shifts between
the peculiar and the transgressive, but helping with this is that it had to be
filmed within real environments including an ordinary city home making up a
huge amount of the production value. The paradox of depicting mankind as primitives
but shot in ordinary locations interacting with kitchen appliances and flat
screen televisions is as much part of the humour. It also emphasises that this
pretty much strips away its characters' emotions to their most vulgar even if
the film did not have a script built around a grunted language. The kind of
acts that are absurd to witness, like defecating on Clingfilm on the floor, but
are things that you could imagine people would actually do and think about
yourself actually doing if you were pushed into that direction.
So that means that, even if
physically it would be difficult to rip a man's whole arm off with just
physical strength, the violence behind it is a facsimile of violent you witness
it real life. Like the sex as well, reduced to clothed dry humping with a lot
of emphasis on ineffectual useless males. Fittingly as a plot, you could squint
and realise this type of plot could have easily played out for a kitchen sink melodrama.
Ryan the drug dealer having taking up a relationship with the older wife Barabara,
the husband left out on the street whilst Smith plays the potential love
interest for fellow member of the household Denise. That it is told in an
extreme and over-the-top manner just provides a stranger and more fascinating
edge in how this type of real life conflict could play out.
Helping the film is its score,
significantly tied to this film as Wilcox's
real life husband is Robert Fripp,
the legendary guitarist and sole figure who has been in all formations of King Crimson, a legendary progressive
rock band. The music comes from the King
Crimson ProjeKcts albums,
provided in respect to his wife starring in Aaaaaaaagh!, and in lieu of it not being originally composed for
the film it is chosen perfectly nonetheless. Even if some of the synthesizers
might be ridiculous, as is expected from as talented a musician as Fripp the score is dynamic and the kind
a low budget production like this it should be grateful for. All because of the
pure chance of their casting, particularly when it comes to the heavier
material, a score here that lifts to material up as well in quality when sadly
a lot of low budget films, and especially those of even lower budgets than this
one without known actors helming them, can struggle at times acquiring
memorable music to place over the scenes.
Is Aaaaaaaagh! actually "abstract" though? That is a
question that can be lost in amongst the praise to the music and the humour of
the film, especially as that is the reason the film is being reviewed in the
first place. The answer? No. The irony is that, within ordinary English streets
and homes, the film structurally by accidentally (or purposely) comes off as a
pastiche of drama which just happens to be cast with ape-people who pee,
fornicate and mutilate each other. With the potential to easily be turned into
a really provocative stage play, the scenario is very normal in tone despite
the strangeness of the material. The strangeness is entirely what the cast do
and how they behave, not the structure of the film itself. The only thing
remotely close to the alienating mood of the abstract is a brief animation repeated
over and over of a chicken, with the most basic of stop motion and quirky music
I secretly hope was also composed by Robert
Fripp.
Aaaaaaaagh! is weird though. The willingness to brake taboos is
thankfully tempered by the generally farcical tone, so that it does not become
merely a string of obscenities but more perversely funny. And that does not
take away from the sudden bleakness which surprises me with the picture's
ending, ultimately proof the film is also good when it does not remove complex
human emotions through the premise. Said ending, in which the sense of betrayal
triggers an act of violence which undercuts the generally funny tone, does
sober the viewer and that reveals a virtue of Oram's picture that might be intentional or not. That, whilst
drawing from the dark sense of humour found in British comedy like Chris Morris' Jam (2000), this is a return to my original point that even if
people were to act like this they would not merely regress into apes, the
psychological baggage depicted in Aaaaaaaagh!
complicating social interaction and behaviour unlike with animals. Merely a
subjective opinion but a large part of Aaaaaaaagh!'s
humour which can be agreed on is that, by dropping these characters into
ordinary environments, it is not that strange to imagine people acting this way
outside the film if they could get away with it.
Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
Personal Opinion:
Definitely a great example of the
current decade's slew of unconventional cinematic oddities, the type that are
one-offs and appeal to cult film fans from the off-set and/or appear at
festivals like this did at FrightFest.
Not outstaying its welcome at less than eighty minutes, when the premise could
have dragged on, Aaaaaaaagh! is
memorable with intelligence behind it.
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