High-Rise: La rivolta

JG Ballard's dystopian science fiction novels have long been regarded as being unfilmable. Ironically it was Steven Spielberg who first made a film of one of his books, the autobiographical Empire of the Sun which was also more conventional.

In High Rise the building clad in some kind of neo 1970s decor is really the star as it represents the social strata. A society in decay. The film opens where there has been a total nihilistic breakdown amongst the occupants where we see a man roasting a dog's leg before we jump back three months earlier.

Dr Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) is a middle class doctor, almost an every-man who is at ease both going up and down the social classes in the tower block. He is helped by Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller) a sexy neighbour who helps Laing get to the upper floors where tastes are more refined. Better parties, music, swimming pool and restaurants for example.

Richard Wilder (Luke Evans whose get up reminds me a lot of actor Stanley Baker) is a truculent documentary maker who lives near the ground floor with his wife and children amongst the rest of the block's poorer tenants. Wilder is aware and resentful of the inequality that exists in building. He has to put up with electricity outages, lifts not working properly, inferior restaurants, shops, parties. Wilder wants to expose the building's architect Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) who lives on the top floor and he also happens to be Laing's occasional squash partner.

As we head towards hedonism, one-upmanship, sex fuelled violence the narrative structure of the film breaks down. The descent into madness is too rapid as Laing suddenly starts to paint his room and himself. The film becomes disjointed although we see some of the upper floor residents who wish to Balkanise the lower floors and re-organise the place more to their benefit.

It is as the novel was just too big and intricate to just chew off and director Ben Wheatley did not have the budget and resources to do it justice.

The film ends with the words of Mrs Margaret Thatcher former Prime Minister of Britain who did so much to ramp up the divisions between rich and poor in the 1980s.

You look at the cast . 10/10 You see the story line 09/10 You see the cinematography 09/10

We settle down , C,mon movie "entertain us" we cry.

1 hour later we just cry.

The morning after watching we are still "none the wiser" which is a great shame.

Very well made with a cast of most of my favourite Brit actors but what the hell is it all about ???? I still haven't got a clue.

Pretentious , Brit film Noir? my biggest regret is we wasted a Saturday night watching it.

My wife kept saying , "turn it off if you don't like it" but we kept thinking it would either 1) get better 2) we would eventually Get It or 3) We watched it this far so there is no point switching it off now.

There is some intense hatred for High-Rise, which I think comes from people expecting something very different to what they found. So I'm going to try and tell you what to expect without any spoilers.

A lot of people will find this movie hard to relate to because it has anti-heroes and is driven by concept rather than character - its pacing is guided more by the ideas it wishes you to consider than the emotions it wants you to experience. Another swathe of viewers will be put off because it offends their politics, and sociology and politics are at the core of this movie. Ballard made some observations about human nature, the which Jump and Wheatley relate to the politics of their own generation. The majority of High-Rise's observations are pessimistic to say the least; those overly sensitive to the observations' bleakness, or who can't relate to their context may not find much here.

But if you can immerse yourself into the film's style, enjoy the outstanding performances and cinematography, and enjoy decrypting J.G.Ballard's metaphors through Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump's lens, there is a lot here for you.

My only gripes are 1) that it didn't show at any cinemas within a reasonable distance from me, and 2) having Abba stuck in my head (although vastly reinvented versions appear in the movie, it is the original song which burrows into my ear like a parasitic worm).

'High Rise' had a lot of promise. An amazing and unique concept, same goes for the source material which is a gripping read and stands out conceptually. Ben Wheatley seemed the right director, as he does have a great style. It had a cast that one really should not go wrong by, the actors all immensely talented. The trailer looked great visually and indicated an intriguing film. Will admit that there were doubts though, as the book is yet another book that is difficult to adapt.

Doubts that sadly proved to be correct on the most part, the reasons have been said frequently here and there is not an awful lot more to add. There are books around that should really have been left alone due to being unadaptable. 'High Rise' is one of them. Other book to film adaptations seen recently that fit under this distinction are 'House of the Spirits' (which would have been much better as a mini-series), 'Naked Lunch', 'Cosmopolis' and 'Crash', just to say that despite singling out three David Cronenberg films he is a director generally held in high regard by me. Coming back to talking about 'High Rise' as a film, it is a case of style over substance and is a difficult to rate film and a case of the trailer being much better than the film. Didn't love it, didn't hate it, am very conflicted really.

It starts off so promisingly. The first half hour, or first act, is very intriguing and easy to follow, drawing one right in. Throughout, 'High Rise' looks fantastic. Actually thought it was one of the best-looking films of the year, the production design alone left me in awe and the cinematography perfectly captures the dystopian nightmarish nature of the story. Clint Mansell's score is both haunting and rousing, adding a lot to what is going on and even enhancing it without over-bearing. Wheatley's direction is very uneven, but he does excel in the visual style which is very imaginative.

The cast are also remarkably great, it is amazing that they did so much with material that they are well above of. Luke Evans especially brings a lot of intensity, charisma and poignancy to the one character the film tries to develop and the one character the viewer feels anything for. Tom Hiddleston carries 'High Rise' with a lot of charm and commands the screen with ease. Jeremy Irons has fun with his role, while also being menacing and providing his distinctive gravitas. Elizabeth Moss is also a standout. The rest of the cast are underused but still make the most of what they have, nobody's bad here.

Such a shame though that 'High Rise' goes downhill rapidly too early in a rather sudden and very violent change of tone and the rest of the film becomes very disjointed. It became increasingly dull with no real momentum, and the middle act especially felt over-stretched and padded. Giving the sense of the film being far too long (by about an hour, the middle half hour could easily have been cut out) and the lack of momentum showing an indication of the story overall being too thin structurally. It is not just dull, it becomes confusing and over-complicated to the point of incoherence. While Wheatley excels on the style aspect of 'High Rise', the substance is messy and too detached, that is what was meant by his direction being uneven. Sad because on paper he seemed the right director.

Felt nothing for the characters, other than Evans' Wilder they are sketchy caricatures kept too much at a distance emotionally. Emotionally, 'High Rise' left me cold, felt very little tension or emotion because there was so much frustration at the lack of momentum in the middle act and the chaotic over-complicated confusion that reached breaking point by the rather abrupt and head-scratching ending. Other frustrations are the vapid and self-indulgent script and a quite interesting moral on paper being executed heavy-handedly.

Overall, very hard to rate and the polarisation in the reviews is understandable. Started off so well and with a lot of great things (especially the visuals and cast) but the rest of the film badly underwhelmed. 5/10

Ben Wheatley is one of the most exciting British directors working today. His two best films are Kill List, a deeply disturbing horror/thriller about a tormented contract killer, and Sightseers, a black comedy about a troubled couple on their parochial, psychopathic honeymoon.

Key to these films' success are strong characters with interesting dynamics. Kill List begins almost like a domestic kitchen-sink drama centred on the failing relationship between Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Burning), but it subsequently evolves, or rather devolves, into something dark, dank and horrible in a most unpredictable manner. Sightseers may be most commonly remembered for its scenes of outlandish violence, such as when Chris (Steve Oram) deliberately runs over a litterer in a fit of righteous anger. However, underneath the comic outbursts of gore is the poignant relationship between Chris and Tina (Alice Lowe), an oddball pair with a past of loneliness and insecurity.

Having proved himself as a director of visceral horror and emotional substance, Ben Wheatley is the natural choice to direct J. G. Ballard's High-Rise, a Goldingesque tale of violent class war exploding within a brutalist tower block. The fragility of civilisation, and the primitive savagery that lurks beneath it, is a darkly fascinating subject that has made for excellent films and books, such as Threads, a devastating vision of post- apocalyptic Britain, and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, which needs no introduction.

High-Rise does not brush shoulders with such works, for its allegory of class divide gets lost in a dull montage of blood, sweat and blue paint. Oh, and dancing air hostesses, for reasons that are, to put it politely, enigmatic.

The focal characters - Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston), a measured, middle class doctor; Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller), a sultry woman who serves as Laing's gateway in to upper floors' high culture; Richard Wilder (Luke Evans), a pugnaciously aspirational documentary maker; and Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons), the patrician architect who designed the building - are introduced well enough, but ultimately do not receive sufficient development.

As the lead and perhaps most relatable character, we are in the body of Laing when he traverses the tower's social scene, which he admits to 'not being very good at'. Some may find him steely, but Laing has an affable reserve and high emotional intelligence. He isn't particularly interested in the petty one-upmanship that comes with climbing the social ladder, but he manages to deftly negotiate it anyway through his insouciant reserve that maintains peoples' interest and disarms any potential enemies. Hiddleston, one of Britain's hottest exports, is well cast here, he delivers the best performance of the film.

However, after a competent introduction to society in the high rise, Laing and the others get lost in an incoherent narrative that favours aesthetics and absurdity over credible character interplay. It begins three months ahead of the main events, showing a blood spattered Laing roasting a dog's leg over a fire surrounded by dirt and detritus. After the introductory period of around thirty minutes, the film then charts what led to this repellent spectacle with a disjointed series of set pieces that give little sense of progression.

Electrical problems are plaguing the building and resentment is brewing between the upper and lower floors, but the descent into nihilism just happens. Dogs are being drowned, Laing's painting his apartment (and himself) like a total madman and the whole building becomes a rubbish-strewn nightmare - but there's no tension, no crescendo, no credibility and, curiously, no one who considers leaving! The worsening relations should have been more gradual and given much greater depth and meaning by the characters, their dialogue and their relationships. Instead, the main character covers himself in paint to communicate his increasingly aberrant state of mind, which appears to be an obvious metaphor for tribal decorations.

High-Rise fails as a film about primal savagery and particularly as a film about class. In Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, I cringed as Jasmine and her husband Hal, arrogant members of New York high society, barely contained their raging superiority complexes as they awkwardly condescended to Ginger (Jasmine's sister) and Augie, a decidedly blue collar couple who wonder at Hal and Jasmine's luxurious home. No such realist interplay is to be found in High-Rise, because its characters are thinly drawn and it isn't rooted in reality, which is very much to its detriment.

Towards the film's end, there are moments in which Royal and his minions discuss the politics and future of the tower, with Royal remarking that the lower floors should be 'Balkanised', meaning that they should be fragmented and pitted against each other in a manner reminiscent of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. I liked the use of that phrase, there should have been a lot more of this in the script, more overt political manoeuvring rather than surrealist claptrap and brutalist 70s chic.

Alas, Wheatley's High-Rise is more concerned with aesthetics and the 1970s, which means there's more in the way of shag-pile carpets, dodgy hair and the colour brown than developed characters, coherent narrative structure and sociopolitical substance.