The Beast Pageant (2010)

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Directors: Albert Birney and Jon Moses

Screenplay: Albert Birney and Jon Moses

Cast: Jon Moses as Abraham; S. Michael Smith as The Watermelon Man; Ted Greenway as The Machine Man; Ron Bauerle as The Milkmother; Samantha Bennettlepel as Rock; Chelsea Bonagura as The Machine Woman; Janice Dowd as The Receptionist; Jon Eaton as The Artichoke Man

Synopsis: In a future urban environment, where fishing and tuna are the main activities and produce, a man named Abraham (Jon Moses) spends his days in an awful nine-to-five job at a fish factory, or in front of a TV/home computer which dictates his life and constantly tries to sell him goods, all the while as bitter memories of his girlfriend's demise at the hand of fish haunts him. When a miniature cowboy grows out of his side, things are about to change drastically.

Funded with the assistance of Kickstarter and taking over three years to actually finish, The Beast Pageant crosses a fine line between the intentionally eccentric and the intentional (and weird) darkness in the midst of this, succeeding for me if a tonal juxtaposition between the whimsical and twisted that also caught me off guard. At times it becomes nightmarish with its watermelon man illicitly trying to sell hammers under his duffel coat, other times evoking the failed Beatles TV special Magical Mystery Tour (1967) both, when the film turns into a musical, for some of the songs but also when the protagonist Abraham (co-director Jon Moses) ends up in the woodlands from his apartment, and the literal tree people appear, images you could synch I Am The Walrus up to.

The idea behind the film, once the film already sets up its intentions for surrealism in the opening with a completely naked man on a beach, part of the film's admirable equality in male and female cast members in terms of nude scenes, is a pretty travelled road of one figure's complete dissatisfaction with life. It's done with eccentricity but it's still a dull, aimless life and the search of esoteric transformation that is an obsession for many films of this type of psychotronic cinema. In this case, when your girlfriend, in flashbacks here, is covered in dead fish and all that remains of her is a head part of one's automated television/home set-up, there's a greater sense to ask what the point of life is as it is for Abraham. It's very commonplace themes at hand here, which even for the whimsical directions this has, does leave it with a very adult underbelly alongside material deeply inappropriate for children.

It also has the television constantly trying to sell Abraham commercial goods by way of 8-bit and web animation-like advertising, part of the film's own idiosyncrasies at play. The darker tone, in one of the more distinct details, is constantly seesawing with a homemade eccentricity where stop motion contrasts intentionally crude animated sequences with folk jingles, between a giant catfish riding race shilling sunglasses to the fact Jon Moses also has to play all these characters in the advertisements including the women. The hard work behind the production cannot be dismissed, its low budget forcing in the best of circumstances to use inventing production ideas and to just openly embrace its production values' flaws as an aesthetic depth. Even with mind of the directors' past history with music videos, there is also the decision to have filmed The Beast Pageant on an old Bolex camera they have said to have found, the moulding of an old style monochrome with the kind of sequences embraced by vaporwave a unique melding.

The shifts between whimsy and flat out perverseness, ramped up when an actual singing cowboy grows from the side of Abraham (also played by Jon Moses attached to himself for added oddness), are the most surprising detail The Beast Pageant can claim as its own. Michel Gondry meets lo-fi Guy Maddin is the initial blub, one which is also a musical. The music in particular emphasises the hard work at hand, as usually I would find this type of indie folk music awful weren't it for the fact here, especially when more musicians of a form of orchestra are introduced later on, it's a rich and beautiful one to listen to. You can argue the creators let the musical sequences indulge themselves, but they themselves add to the strange mood, such as a giant Abraham at a tiny house where a miniature nudist couple dance along to the cowboy's song.

Whilst the initial half of the film with its bombardment of obscure advertisements is fun, I'd argue the final half in those woodlands is where I was won over by The Beast Pageant, among those genderless bush people I've already mentioned, the film despite its folk whimsy aesthetic and creepy Lynchian aspirations suddenly getting into pop folklore by way of the I Am The Walrus vibe. The music, now the musical aspect is fully embraced, even has the style of sweet folk songs, all the while with the possibility of having been a charming family film if it didn't purposely undercut it with freaking and exceptionally dark moments. From the baby being born out of a giant breast to the deer man with an axe who cuts a off a musical number literally, it purposely undercuts its moments of charm and it feels absolutely deliberate, the emotional rollercoaster for us as the viewer as well as Abraham startling. In the end of the day it leads to Abraham, having escaped his industrial prison, a dull job being berated by his elderly management (literal old men), and having found himself. The project from Albert Birney and Jon Moses was likely one of experimenting in their wildest ideas but it all returns to an idea even the silliest of weird films, and a production like this does, of trying to find oneself in a topsy-turvy world, all the existential angst and transformation found in The Beast Pageant too.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Grotesque/Homemade/Lo-Fi/Weird/Whimsical

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Whilst it does find itself among a lot of influences and similar films which might marginalise it - I sadly never knew of the existence of this film until recently - I was delighted to discover The Beast Pageant, a fascinating creation whose hard work should be better known. Albert Birney and Jon Moses definitely could go from this aesthetic style - the monochrome or even the juxtaposition of whimsical material you'd find on YouTube violently juxtaposed with a naturalist homemade style shot in the woodlands of at least three different American states - and turn it into their own unique filmography whether from more low budget productions like this or if they were ever to get funding for a larger scale project.