Palmy Days (A Conversation Piece)

Palmy Days is among the more obscure additions to the Conversation Pieces series, in that, unlike Early Bird and Late Edition, it didn't make the rounds on early Aardman video compilations, and prior to its inclusion on the Aardman Classics DVD released in 2000, must have been one elusive beast indeed to get a hold of.  Shame that, because at this point in Lord and Sproxton's career it might just have been the weirdest, most wickedly inventive film they'd devised so far.  Even today, it still holds up as one of the genuine oddities of Aardman's output, and is an absolute must-see for fans of experimental animation, or those with a particular interest in the history of the studio.

One of the few Aardman biographers to give Palmy Days any kind of extensive focus is Andy Lane, in the book Creating Creature Comforts (published by Boxtree in 2003), in which he identifies the film as the precursor to Nick Park's Creature Comforts (1989).   Lane reports that the audio recording used as the basis for Palmy Days proved difficult to stage as an animated short due to the disjointed and meandering nature of the conversation.  In the end Lord and Sproxton were forced to be a little more inventive in how they envisioned this one, resulting in a film that strayed quite markedly from the series' original vision of replicating the reality of each recorded scenario while creating something altogether fresher and quirkier - according to Lane, "...the episode stood out well from the rest because the drama came not from the words but from the obvious discrepancy between what the audience was hearing and seeing." (p.52)  Lane is incorrect in suggesting that Palmy Days was the only film in the Conversation Pieces series to do this - as we've observed, Early Bird thrived on upon the discrepancies created by a visibly weary disc jockey with a perky on-air persona, or the combination of mundane radio dialogue with the surreal happenings inside the studio.  Still, as much fun as Early Bird had with piling on one loopy sight gag after another, it nevertheless preserved the original context of the audio recording - fundamentally, it was always about a morning DJ presenting at a regional radio station, give or take a random frog or an even more random taxidermic cat.

Palmy Days, by contrast, changes the context of its own recording quite significantly, adjusting the setting and using a variety of visual cues to infer a backstory that is not implicit in the characters' dialogue, but which nevertheless radically alters our perception of their discussion.  As with Creature Comforts, the film functions primarily as an exercise in how you can change the meaning and implications of a sample of dialogue by taking it out of its original context.  In this case, the dialogue derives from a group of seasoned globe-trotters discussing their past experiences with air travel, along with their views on their current living arrangements, and ultimately reflecting that they wouldn't like to live anywhere else now.  As far as the conversation itself goes, it's certainly less focused than the others in the series, which all came packaged with their own in-built miniature narratives, be it a door-to-door salesman struggling to impress an elderly couple in the equipment he's flogging, a young offender reluctantly having to negotiate for time off from a session with his probation officers, or a disc jockey taking us through his morning routine before finally handing things over to his unusually articulate parrot.  In all cases, there was some obvious progression from A to B which provided the basis for the narrative shape of each short.  This is what the conversation used in Palmy Days essentially lacked; broadly, it consists of little more than a collection of anecdotes, with no particularly obvious cumulative effect.  Instead, Lord and Sproxton took it upon themselves to work in a narrative, re-envisioning the speakers as a rugged band of desert island castaways who've been stranded for so long that they've become wholly adjusted to the lifestyle, and remain oblivious to a potential source of rescue that surfaces throughout the course of the film.

The opening images of the film show the remains of a crashed aircraft partially submerged in the sand, which gives us a clue as to how our heroes ended up in their current predicament, before panning over to a small hut fashioned from twigs and thatched with palm leaves, where we find five elderly figures gathering for a round of tea.  That's right, despite being stranded out in the middle of nowhere and with zero contact from the world beyond, these folks are still enjoying the luxury of a traditional cup of tea, albeit brewed in a teapot woven out of sticks and (it's implied) through recycling the same teabag over and over.  Much of the film's humour derives from how they manage to keep all the familiar components of civilisation ticking along, and from their resourcefulness in adjusting to the island environment - one character uses a bone to casually stir her tea, while another rests his cup upon the back of a moving tortoise - their cultivated behaviour providing a playful contrast with the tell-tale rips in their clothing and their tendency to take the occasional munch from a raw fish or octopus.  The tropical setting itself is beautifully constructed; lush and colourful, and with sight gags and background details aplenty, from the rat revealed to be nesting in one gentleman's beard to the three bird skeletons seen adorning one of the walls of the hut in the manner of a set of flying duck ornaments.  An interruption in the soundtrack (unexplained within the dialogue itself) in which the speakers are heard to gasp and tut is also wittily incorporated into the environment of the film, shown here to be in reaction to a coconut falling through the roof of the hut.

Initially, we find the characters reminiscing about past adventures, with one man recalling a particularly turbulent flight in which one of his fellow passengers was violently ill (the punchline to this anecdote is revealed later on in the discussion, when he muses how, shortly afterward, he encountered the same individual at an airport cafe, wolfing down a plate of greasy chips).  The short really begins to pop, however, whenever the focus shifts onto the present situation, with the characters mulling over how their eating habits have changed since their arrival, and finally agreeing that they now feel very well-settled where they are, with no aspirations of relocating (in that sense, the film's concerns are very similar to those of Creature Comforts, which also deals with the complexities of having to adjust to living arrangements that are isolating or alien).  It's here that Lord and Sproxton's added-on narrative really comes into play, radically changing what we make of these character reflections.  The story we get, communicated largely through the inventiveness of the visuals, is one of individuals formerly gripped by wanderlust, who've now been confined a single spot for so long that they no longer entertain any thoughts of leaving.  Arguably, they have found serenity in the simplicity and solitude of their surroundings, but Lord and Sproxton throw in an additional, hilariously cruel twist, by having a prospective means of rescue finally show up long after they've apparently made their peace with the situation.

Although only four speaking voices are heard in the audio, there is an additional, mostly silent figure who sits apart from the rest and whose key purpose (other than to have a rat pop comically out of his beard) is to provide a humorous but also downright harrowing contrast to their words of stoic contentment.  Toward the end of the short, he becomes aware of a ship on the distant waters but is so overwhelmed by shock and excitement that he immediately collapses, whereupon he attempts feebly to point out this potential means of escape to the others but fails to attract much notice.  Such is the extent of the others' complacency that they have learned to tune out any foreign or external noises - the sound of the ship's horn bellowing out across the sea comes just as one character muses that he really appreciates life on the island because "you don't hear any noise - at least I don't think so."

Availability: The Aardman Classics DVD is your only bet.