High Rise (15.)
Directed by Ben Wheatley.
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, James Purefoy, Elisabeth Moss and Jeremy Irons. 112 mins.
High Rise is yesterday's dystopian vision today. J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel imagines a 40 storey tower block populated by the middle to upper classes, where life quickly degenerates into hedonism and then barbarism as the different floors battle against each other for resources and power. The lower floors are led by ruffian documentary maker Wilder (Evans), the upper floors by the architect of the tower Royal (Irons), and somewhere in the middle is Lang (Hiddleston) a doctor who is trying to avoid any alignments.
Wheatley opts for a period setting but it's barely noticeable apart from a few fashion choices and pregnant women smoking and drinking. Updating it would've been pointless and probably counterproductive: firstly because high rise living is such a 70s topic, and secondly because Ballard's creations exist parallel to reality. They don't date but they look stupid applied to the present day; any present day.
Ballard's a slippery character to adapt. Living in the leafy suburbs of Shepperton he sat around most days getting quietly sozzled on gin and tonics and banging out various provocative fantasies. His creative life is to imagine a version of The Good Life where Margo and Jerry's neighbour was William S. Burroughs rather than Tom and Barbara Good. His favourite ploy was taking middle class people, ripping away their securities and turning them lose in some wild alternative world. The civilized norms would collapse; yet they never quite lose sight of their class status.
(And in case you're wondering, yes, this is going to be one of those whiny “Muh, it's not as good as the book reviews.” I should be above such things, but I'm not. And it's a damn fine book.)
The challenge in adapting him is that his works weren't satires and they weren't warnings. They were cold and bloodless and yet full of real life and ugly passions. He is often considered to be unfilmable, except Cronenberg's version of Crash is the finest and most perfect literary adaptation ever made. The two men seemed to mesh perfectly: their two Crashes are separate but equal, both true to each other yet independently valid. Wheatley hasn't found that connection but for an hour or so his approach – to film it as a free wheeling black comedy – seems to be playing out quite nicely. It's not the book, but it makes its own kind of sense. But as life in the block degenerates into chaos so does the film. The challenge would always be to find some realistic way to portray Ballard's absurd scenario and they haven't found one. Instead we get fobbed off with a number of chaotic montages of degenerate behavior and really left to make the connections ourselves. And once you've lost grip on the tone than there isn't a lot to keep you interested in this selection of violence and sex.
High Rise is like Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, his film about a middle class dinner party where the guest find they can't bring themselves to leave, even though nothing is stopping them and are stuck there for weeks. As food runs out and the killings start in the tower block the occupants feel driven to stay in the mayhem. Ballard can get that absurdity across, but in the film it just seems like a contrivance.
If Wheatley can't find an equivalent of Ballard's voice, than at least Hiddleston does. At one point he turns up in a tuxedo at what turns out to be a fancy dress party. He looks out of place, as he does throughout the film. He always seems to be acting in a completely different, almost certainly much better, film. I don't think I can remember a performer so disconnected, so isolated from the performers around him. Which is, of course, perfect for the part. Though it also helps that his character is the only one who isn't a caricature.
This project has gone through many possible incarnations over the year with Roeg and Cronenberg close to filming it. Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) wrote a script for it and was passionate about making it. Though that might have been interesting, during the film I thought we were probably better off with Wheatley because at least he wouldn't try to make a political point with it. But then, right at the end ,the film tries to hammer in some message about consumerism and market forces that doesn't bear any relation to what preceded it. Doctors and newsreaders are killing each other and barbecuing their pet dogs and you want to make it all about Thatcher?
Ben Wheatley reviews
A Field in England
Sightseers
Kill list
Directed by Ben Wheatley.
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, James Purefoy, Elisabeth Moss and Jeremy Irons. 112 mins.
High Rise is yesterday's dystopian vision today. J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel imagines a 40 storey tower block populated by the middle to upper classes, where life quickly degenerates into hedonism and then barbarism as the different floors battle against each other for resources and power. The lower floors are led by ruffian documentary maker Wilder (Evans), the upper floors by the architect of the tower Royal (Irons), and somewhere in the middle is Lang (Hiddleston) a doctor who is trying to avoid any alignments.
Wheatley opts for a period setting but it's barely noticeable apart from a few fashion choices and pregnant women smoking and drinking. Updating it would've been pointless and probably counterproductive: firstly because high rise living is such a 70s topic, and secondly because Ballard's creations exist parallel to reality. They don't date but they look stupid applied to the present day; any present day.
Ballard's a slippery character to adapt. Living in the leafy suburbs of Shepperton he sat around most days getting quietly sozzled on gin and tonics and banging out various provocative fantasies. His creative life is to imagine a version of The Good Life where Margo and Jerry's neighbour was William S. Burroughs rather than Tom and Barbara Good. His favourite ploy was taking middle class people, ripping away their securities and turning them lose in some wild alternative world. The civilized norms would collapse; yet they never quite lose sight of their class status.
(And in case you're wondering, yes, this is going to be one of those whiny “Muh, it's not as good as the book reviews.” I should be above such things, but I'm not. And it's a damn fine book.)
The challenge in adapting him is that his works weren't satires and they weren't warnings. They were cold and bloodless and yet full of real life and ugly passions. He is often considered to be unfilmable, except Cronenberg's version of Crash is the finest and most perfect literary adaptation ever made. The two men seemed to mesh perfectly: their two Crashes are separate but equal, both true to each other yet independently valid. Wheatley hasn't found that connection but for an hour or so his approach – to film it as a free wheeling black comedy – seems to be playing out quite nicely. It's not the book, but it makes its own kind of sense. But as life in the block degenerates into chaos so does the film. The challenge would always be to find some realistic way to portray Ballard's absurd scenario and they haven't found one. Instead we get fobbed off with a number of chaotic montages of degenerate behavior and really left to make the connections ourselves. And once you've lost grip on the tone than there isn't a lot to keep you interested in this selection of violence and sex.
High Rise is like Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, his film about a middle class dinner party where the guest find they can't bring themselves to leave, even though nothing is stopping them and are stuck there for weeks. As food runs out and the killings start in the tower block the occupants feel driven to stay in the mayhem. Ballard can get that absurdity across, but in the film it just seems like a contrivance.
If Wheatley can't find an equivalent of Ballard's voice, than at least Hiddleston does. At one point he turns up in a tuxedo at what turns out to be a fancy dress party. He looks out of place, as he does throughout the film. He always seems to be acting in a completely different, almost certainly much better, film. I don't think I can remember a performer so disconnected, so isolated from the performers around him. Which is, of course, perfect for the part. Though it also helps that his character is the only one who isn't a caricature.
This project has gone through many possible incarnations over the year with Roeg and Cronenberg close to filming it. Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) wrote a script for it and was passionate about making it. Though that might have been interesting, during the film I thought we were probably better off with Wheatley because at least he wouldn't try to make a political point with it. But then, right at the end ,the film tries to hammer in some message about consumerism and market forces that doesn't bear any relation to what preceded it. Doctors and newsreaders are killing each other and barbecuing their pet dogs and you want to make it all about Thatcher?
Ben Wheatley reviews
A Field in England
Sightseers
Kill list
