Review of All This Mayhem (2014) by Harry W — 12 Oct 2014

A Documentary about Australiaâ??s role in the history of professional skating, All This Mayhem sounded like it would be an interesting experience.

Surely enough, it was because All This Mayhem proved to be the finest documentary of 2014 so far and the second finest film of the year.

The reason that All This Mayhem was so impressive was because of the nature of its subject matter and the simple fact that it was able to keep things interesting at a firm and consistent rate, continuously putting new surprises into its tale of adventure, troubles and woe. Things unfold in All this Mayhem really naturally as the story progresses in terms of chronology. There were many twists and turns that I could not have expected in All This Mayhem, and they never required dramatization because they all happened so naturally. Director Eddie Martin forces viewers to confront the subject matter and harsh reality of the story, and he respects his viewers and interviewees enough to ensure that there are no lies in his story. Although occasionally there are a few questions viewers are bound to be left with which the documentary does not fully answer, most of the time the film tells the truth with such brutality that it is unbelievable and really shocking. The effect of All This Mayhem is practically heartbreaking, and the way that it touches into the souls of the characters as they re-examine the wreckage of their past is just brutal.

All This Mayhem has the people of the story giving fully honest interviews as they look into the damaging lives they have led, and they hide nothing in the stories they tell as they discuss things with passion. The story begins as a Documentary about the dreams of young Australian boys which were fulfilled as they went through growing up as careless and energetic young boys, distracting themselves from their own social status with the thrill of skateboarding. The way that the film depicts this progressing into a career for some of its figures is inspiring, considering that they ended up competing against the internationally recognised pro-skater Tony Hawk who is arguably the most notable professional skater in the world. The people in All This Mayhem have a story that needs to be told because it reflects part of Australian history as well as the development of Skateboarding as a professional sport, and how it transitioned from an act of individualism and freedom into a commercialised product of the entertainment industry. Instead of glamourizing everything, All This Mayhem depicts it as it truly is and shows just what kinds of people really participated in the sport without fear. It is an honest film, and it captures the history of Australia, Skateboarding and the Pappas brothers with impressive detaio thanks to the extensive quantity of footage compiled of hours of footage filmed of the boys as they grew up. The keen dedication to filming and editing in All This Mayhem is very impressive, and so that is one of the primary things that the documentary deserves praise for is the scale that it captures in terms of history as it reveals the cultural shift that came with the development of skating as a sport and how it affected the lives of so many people. As a large scale project, All This Mayhem is impressive. But it is more important for the way that it depicts the lives of the characters.

Viewers are likely to have been told stories about people who took a rise to fame and fell hard thanks to the influence of drugs and alcohol on their lives many times before in fictional films or documentaries. All This Mayhem stands out because it is unpredictable and because it shows how it affected both Tas and Ben Pappas as well as the relationship they shared as brothers. It is brutal to see it unfold and especially the effect it had on the life of Tas Pappas as Ben Pappas could not be interviewed for the film. The way that their lives develop and change so much over the course of the film is rather shocking and somewhat hard to face because of how emotionally devastating it really is. I nearly cried watching the film because I felt the effect of the filmâ??s exploration of crushed dreams, failure and damaged brotherhood all in the one story. It covered decades of storytelling with people who needed their stories told for the sake of understanding true Australian history, and the mentality in the film was psychotic. There is no way of telling what would come next in the lives of the people explored in All This Mayhem, and so the twists are unexpected and rather shocking, particularly towards the end of the film. All This Mayhem ends on an uplifting note, but only after it has been through so much emotionally wrecking material that there is an underlying level of sadness which is undeniable. The kinds of emotions I walked away from All This Mayhem having felt were seriously shocking, and it was so much to take in that I was left with a headache from experiencing such a brutal mindf*ck. It was a good headache, the kind you get when a film experience is so powerful that it overloads your mind with too many feelings to easily comprehend. I felt shock, I felt remorse, I felt sadness, sympathy and so many other things. I also felt disbelief that I had never been told this story before, so All This Mayhem not only tells a story that really needed to be told but did it excellently. I have never cried for a documentary before, but All This Mayhem brought me to the verge of tears after putting me through a third person perspective of the damage that drugs and fame has on a person even when it is just because of skating. The story sources back to something as simple as skating, but like the people in the documentary, it eventually loses touch with them and ends up in a twisted world that they never wanted to enter. All This Mayhem begins as a film about skating but spirals into a much more complex and devastating world just like the people being documented, and so the experience is just incredible.

So All This Mayhem hits the list as being the finest film of 2014 so far due to the fact that it handles the raw nature of its harsh material with honesty and grit which makes it a devastating and thoroughly entertaining experience which tells a tale which has been hidden from contemporary society for too long.