Aaaaaaaah!

Let’s not mince words: Steve Oram is a mas­ter film­mak­er. He’ll be known to British audi­ences for his co-star­ring role in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 com­e­dy-hor­ror hybrid, Sight­seers, in which he played one half of an odd­ball two­some tra­vers­ing the Eng­lish coun­try­side and who take a hatch­et to the skull of any­thing or any­one that doesn’t chime with their quaint Mid­lands sen­si­bil­i­ties. Aaaaaaaah! is his debut fea­ture film as writer and direc­tor, a trans­gres­sive sit­u­a­tion­ist com­e­dy which is also one of the great British films of the new mil­len­ni­um. Explain­ing why is not going to be easy.

The film opens with Oram dressed in a grey car-coat lop­ing into a wood­land clear­ing along­side a sim­i­lar­ly attired cohort played by Tom Meeten. He removes a pho­to­graph of a woman con­tained with­in a cheap gold frame from his pock­et, briefly weeps, toss­es it onto the ground and the pair pro­ceed to uri­nate on top of it. No dia­logue has been spo­ken up until this point. Meeten duti­ful­ly wipes the tip of Oram’s penis, and only then do the pair engage in brief dis­course which com­pris­es of gut­tur­al whelp­ing and groan­ing. No actu­al words. Though it is nev­er offi­cial­ly spo­ken, Aaaaaaaah! takes place in what appears as a bizarro plan­et Earth where human beings are in a state of reverse evo­lu­tion, where they’ve reached their phys­i­o­log­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al apex and now the scale is slid­ing back the oth­er way. Back down to the bottom.

These men are of a light simi­an per­sua­sion, yet the film has very lit­tle in com­mon with the fan­tas­ti­cal, aggres­sive­ly satir­i­cal likes of Plan­et of the Apes. The con­di­tions and social rit­u­als of low­er-mid­dle class life – includ­ing dan­ger­ous­ly cav­a­lier atti­tudes towards sex and death – have been del­i­cate­ly sup­plant­ed into this alter­nate real­i­ty, and human beings are now recon­struct­ed with an ape-like sense of inner con­scious­ness, where the nature of vio­lence, sex­u­al hook-ups, per­son­al com­port­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, taste and com­pe­ti­tion are all irrev­o­ca­bly altered from the norm. Yet, things haven’t changed so much that life is now based on com­plete­ly ran­dom impuls­es. The basic rules still stand.

It recalls Pasolini’s Salò, or Buñuel’s The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie – both with­er­ing satires in their own right which work because the direc­tors for­mu­late a con­vinc­ing world which is just sim­i­lar enough for the films to land their polit­i­cal barbs, and just dif­fer­ent enough for the char­ac­ters to remain empa­thet­ic, even if morally/​ethically dam­aged. Greek direc­tor Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos has long been carous­ing in this par­tic­u­lar play-pen of cin­e­ma with works like Dog­tooth, Alps and The Lob­ster, though there’s some­thing about Oram’s film which is beau­ti­ful and tran­scen­dent because of its near-total dearth of cynicism.

The rea­son that Aaaaaaaah! is so utter­ly suc­cess­ful as a piece of cin­e­ma is that it nev­er direct­ly acknowl­edges its satir­i­cal intent, play­ing out a sto­ry which nev­er once sees Oram tak­ing a brash side-swipe at a type of per­son, an insti­tu­tion or an aspect of mod­ern cul­ture (Prince Har­ry except­ed). Its world is ful­ly immer­sive, and is all the more beguil­ing because we nev­er have The Rules school­marmish­ly deliv­ered to us as soon as the film starts. Oram leaves things open for him­self, so he has the option of adding a sur­prise lay­er lat­er on, or alter­ing one that already exists. The scuzzy, hand-held, jud­der­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy – atmos­pher­i­cal­ly aug­ment­ed by the fact that it’s always driz­zling rain – comes across like the film is adher­ing to the guid­ing stric­tures of the uncouth world in which it inhab­its, that there’s man-mon­keys in front of and behind the camera.

Effec­tive world-build­ing is con­tin­gent on every­one involved being in on the joke, or at least on the same ide­o­log­i­cal page. This is one of the great suc­cess­es of Aaaaaaaah! – every­one who appears on screen gets what’s going on, there’s not a sin­gle char­ac­ter whose appear­ance shat­ters the illu­sion. Indeed, Oram is so trust­ing of his cast that he makes amus­ing ani­mal king­dom rank­ings, at one point intro­duc­ing a shop secu­ri­ty guard whose dia­logue is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from every­one else’s, sug­gest­ing he’s a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more respect­ed and poten­tial­ly more vio­lent breed of monkey.

Plac­ing the film’s mag­nif­i­cent tech­ni­cal achieve­ments aside for a moment, the oth­er key rea­son for its great­ness is because it’s plain­ly and sim­ply hilar­i­ous­ly fun­ny. Oram’s own thou­sand-yard dead­pan is chill­ing and amus­ing in equal mea­sure, but there’s also very game sup­port­ing turns from Toy­ah Will­cox, Julian Bar­ratt (who spends the entire film clutch­ing a length of Bat­ten­burg) and Julian Rhind-Tutt. I’ve nev­er laughed so hard at the tragi­com­e­dy of three peo­ple hav­ing a qui­et kick-about on an emp­ty field while it’s raining.

The cli­mac­tic achieve­ment of Aaaaaaaah! – its mirac­u­lous coup de grace – is that it even­tu­al­ly reveals itself as a film about the shat­ter­ing expe­ri­ence of los­ing a loved one or being dis­placed and ostracised because you don’t quite have the mox­ie to retain the ter­ri­to­ry you’ve laboured to carve out for your­self. The film explores the dif­fer­ence between men and women, with female char­ac­ters con­fined to kitchens and bed­rooms, the male char­ac­ters nat­u­ral­ly falling into the roles of default pro­tec­tors and bread­win­ners. Oram knows how to hold a shot long enough to make it evolve into some­thing more than it ini­tial­ly appears, draw­ing our the hap­py tragedy of domes­tic work­ing class life from the bliss­ful com­e­dy that comes from dan­gling your tes­ti­cles on the fore­head of an enemy.