High-Rise

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.

I had the pleasure of viewing High-Rise at a recent film festival. I went in with high expectations, which gave way to boredom and the anticipation of the end of the showing.

The actors absolutely fulfilled all expectations. The performances are all highly nuanced and look natural, rather than put on. Hiddleston goes above and beyond to give one of the arguably best performances of his career. The mise-en-scene of each scene is meticulously crafted and beautifully shot.

So what, exactly, tipped high expectations into boredom?

For one, the film never does come together, never gives off the feeling of a cohesive whole, but rather of a series of vignettes. Each vignette is, of course, beautifully shot, but the disconnect they cause makes it impossible to empathize with any of the characters.

Additionally, suspension of disbelief is near impossible. Why do the characters make the choices they do? What drives them to this madness?

Overall, I would recommend this piece to very loyal fans of any of the actors or to cinephiles with a high degree of patience.

6.5/10

Is High-Rise an anti-capitalist manifesto, meant to show the evil of inequality? Is it an attack on the British class society? Is it meant to show how modern architecture alienates people from each other? Or is it just a succession of weird scenes, giving the director the opportunity to show off? There's something to say for all of the above, but I'm inclined towards the last. The film really is too incoherent to convey a clear message or idea. The metaphor of a huge high-rise building to symbolize society at large is interesting, but could have been better expressed. As it is now, the metaphor gets mostly lost in an avalanche of weird, decadent or shocking scenes. As a viewer, you keep waiting for the story to become clear, but it never really happens.

This is even more annoying because the film is much too long, and already from the start it's clear how it ends because the whole story is one large flash back. The result is zero suspense and maximum weariness.

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.

Life for the residents of a tower begins to run out of control.

High-Rise is the adaptation of J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel, directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Tom Hiddleston as Dr. Robert Laing. I didn't really know what to expect from this movie, as I did not read the book, so I came at it from a fresh perspective. This film is a quasi-period piece, which is not completely irrelevant to a Britain in which buy-to-let apartment block exist. It is a blank, affectless world with a certain type of sci-fi and satirical Englishness. This tale is quite a bizarre, sleek, seedy and mad spectacle.

If Jeremy Iron's roles in Dead Ringer and M.Butterfly provide a roundabout link to Cronenberg, so does a med-school scene where the skin of a cadaver's head is peeled away in a kind of metaphor for society's thin surface. That and his wife parading around like some postmodern Marie Antoinette, on a horse. In fact, the core cast is brilliant. Tom Hiddleston is terrifically nonchalant, giving a great performance as the lead character: dry and self-possessed. A charming and charismatic performance with a hint of internal sadness. Plus, Miller makes bright work of Charlotte.

Mark Tildesley's lavish production design ranges from mouldering fruit bowls to posh parties decadent enough to cause a French Revolution. Decadence, despair and violence are all around, in a kind of ongoing erotic catastrophe. The screenwriters played out this scenario as a retro-futuristic sci-fi allegory - Ballard was writing the near-future in the mid-70s: Wheatley and Jump smartly stick with a period they know well. I loved the film's refusal of "normal" storytelling, bold visual style with these gorgeous shots and vibrant colours. Combined with the editing, shots have a dream- like surreal quality, a colourful beginning contrasted by the end with a dark shadow feeling.

The soundtrack was great, there is two scenes especially where there's this string quartet playing an ABBA song and later on it gets remix, it was probably one of my favourite scenes - as well as this very interesting naked scene on the balcony that might also be of some interest to some of you. Finally, for some High-Rise could be frustrating and the specific references to Margaret Thatcher era doesn't quite work as a whole.

Overall, High-Rise has a vibe of "you want to look away but you really can't". This film is an excellent allegory for society, it lingers in the mind with some strong visuals, good soundtrack and more than decent acting.