Year: 2016
Director: Ben Wheatley
No-one going to do this? Oh, OK then. I watched this on Easter Sunday afternoon, in the polite company of a middle class audience in the local arthouse cinema, who seemed completely unmoved, positively or negatively, by the demented, head-spinning, blackly comic film they were watching. Very Ballardian.
The film is set in a 1970s tower block, newly built as a Utopian social project by its resident architect, which acts as a class metaphor: upper middle classes on the top floors and the lower reaches of the middle classes at the bottom. Failing building services and increasing resentment of bottom for top (and vice versa), coupled with the hermetic nature of the building – shopping and leisure facilities built in – lead to the complete disintegration of society and a feral (un)civil war breaks out. Dog eating, orgies and death-by-Bafta ensue as the polite mask is ripped off and used to beat people over the head.
The general chaos on screen means that a traditional narrative drive of action>consequence just isn’t there, which has annoyed many people, but it’s handsomely filmed, properly funny in places, and the fragments do hang together if you pay attention. I’m pretty convinced I missed a lot while just enjoying the ride and suspect it will bear repeat viewing well. The transition from order to chaos is fumbled but Wheatley brings his blend of menace and humour to a bigger budget successfully, even if in the end a Thatcher speech is used to bludgeon the point home. The cast of surprisingly big names are great, with Tom Hiddleston, the man who didn’t fall to earth, and Luke Thomas, bringer of chaos, particularly standing out. Interesting Clint Mansell score too, with a well-used cover of Abba’s SOS by Portishead
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Cronenberg films, Wheatley’s previous work, those indulgent of non a>b>c plotting. Do not watch this film while under the influence of psychotropic drugs!
I’m looking forward to this, a huge Ballard fan so will check back in when I’ve seen it. A passing thought was that Cronenberg – with Crash to his credit – could be said to have explored many similar themes in Shivers, which features civilization disintegrating in a ultra-modern apartment block (ok through a genetically engineered sexual parasite).
I saw it a couple of weeks ago in Belfast with Ben Wheatley present for a Q&A. It’s the first of his films I haven’t cared for (been a fan since Down Terrace) – a lack of structure and momentum in the screenplay and no internal logic to make up for it. It has some arresting images and some good performances, but overall just seemed a bit flat to me – I wanted a sense of danger and decay, a certain queasiness in tone that never arrived. Not read the book though, but that’s usually a plus when converting classic novels to the screen.
I know what you mean KDH, the structure seems as anarchic as the on-screen goings on. I suspect there’s more connecting tissue than is obvious, much of it only hinted at, and want to see it again for that reason. It’s one of the Ballard books I haven’t read but I understand the descent is one of incremental steps towards chaos, rather than the headlong tumble of the film. I was enjoying the mayhem too much not to go with it but I understand why others haven’t.
Big fan of The sightseers so this is of interest to me. Your review reinforces that.
It’s a very different film, Steve, but the deadpan humour carries over, as do some Wheatley regulars: for a while I thought Neil Maskell wasn’t going to appear but (spoiler alert!) he pops up in a cameo, so all’s well.
I’m a huge JG Ballard fan and I think that High Rise is one of his best novels, but I’m afraid I have to concur with the assessment of @KDH above.
As @ Pie Chart says in the opening post, the absence of a narrative drive is an issue. I’d suggest that it is a big issue, as is the slipshod way the film handles the transition from order to chaos (it doesn’t ‘handle it’ at all).
I found it all a bit self-consciously arty, to the extent that it reminded me of something that Peter Greenaway would do. By that, I mean that it was all surface and no substance.
Was this on the soundtrack?
The Spectator woman reviewer hated it – normally that wouldn’t have made any difference to me, as my Ballard appreciation put this film high on my to-do list. But she makes a thing of a rape scene, and tbh the sensationalist use of sexual violence really turns me off a film.
Any thoughts?
Probably leave it alone if in doubt. The scene you refer to is troubling but is in the context of a more general debauchery and is not played for titillation, as I saw it. Ballard’s narrators often take a detached, anthropological view of what’s occurring, and Laing in this film does that, but what he sees is unsettling and is meant to be. The rape is depicted, unpleasantly, as rape.
I’d say that the Spectator review is pretty fair. I walked out after about an hour and I can’t remember ever walking out of a cinema before. The Spectator review contains this comment, “after the screening I shared a lift with a group of young men who declared it all ‘absolutely brilliant’, so you pays your money and takes your pick, although if you pays your money for this, I will think rather less of you.” I tend to agree.
Left halfway through. I’d accompanied two friends, and their offspring, to a Mum and Baby screening. You can dip in and out of many films, but this one demands your full attention at all times and even then is pretty hard to follow. Add babies into the mix and it was impossible to concentrate, so we snuck out. Visuals and art direction are fabulous, though.
I’m rereading the book (it was 99p book of the day for the Kindle). I didn’t like the book when I read it circa 7 years ago. I’m now 30% into it and I’m really liking it this time. I think the narrative is disjointed and so if the film seems like random scenes without much natural flow then that’s an accurate reflection of the book. Scenes are isolated with no lead in or lead out. It’s abrupt in an arty way. It’s nice to have a piece of work not try to ingratiate itself with you by being approachable and nice with everything laid out all nice and neat.