Reactions
have been very mixed towards Ben Wheatley's adaptation of "High-Rise,"
the J.G. Ballard dystopian novel. Some love it and some hate it. Those
who expected a genre film that would follow the expected rules of genre
films hated it. Those who expected a more faithful and explicit
retelling of the events of the novel hated it. I fall into neither of
those groups and loved it, as a full throated satire about social unrest
and class warfare. I admit that I was a little worried by the pairing
of director and material - Ben Wheatley's "Kill List" did nothing for me
- but now there's no doubt in my mind that he was exactly the right
director to bring "High-Rise" to the screen.
Dr.
Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston), moves into a new apartment on the 25th
floor of a new luxury high-rise complex on the outskirts of London.
Quickly, he learns that the tenants have adopted a strict hierarchy,
with the wealthy elite on the top floors, and the less
well-off occupying the lower floors. Laing becomes involved with a
single woman named Charlotte (Sienna Miller) a few floors up, and at one
of her parties meets a documentary filmmaker, Richard Wilder (Luke
Evans), and his pregnant wife Helen (Elizabeth Moss), from the lower
floors. Laing is also invited to the penthouse on the 40th floor to
meet the high-rise's visionary architect, Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons),
but is later ejected from a party by his wife, Ann (Keeley Hawes),
limiting Laing's social mobility. Tensions rise as problems in the
high-rise's operations begin to crop up. Garbage chutes are blocked,
the power becomes intermittent, and frictions between residents begin to
escalate. Soon, the system begins to break down, but the tribalism of
the high-rise dwellers only increases.
Wheatley's
"High-Rise" has a lot in common with Bong Joon-ho's "Snowpiercer,"
which also packed the whole of human society into a single, limited
geographical area, and examined social mechanisms through a revolution
in miniature. More importantly, everything in these movies is highly
stylized, and the plot only makes any kind of sense if you treat it as
allegorical. In "High-Rise," the state of the building mirrors the
social order, while Laing's state of mind is linked to his own
apartment, full of still unpacked boxes. Parties operate as displays of
power, and various animals seem to be linked to systems of morality.
Also, though the high-rise is billed as being high tech and futuristic,
Wheatley sets the film in the 1970s, when the novel was originally
written, giving the premise a nostalgic twist. '70s design elements and
culture are heavily incorporated throughout, including a repurposed
ABBA song as one of the main themes, giving the universe a unique
atmosphere that will probably help it age better than its similar genre
contemporaries. The major exception to this is the main
character, bland and anonymous in timeless gray suits, signaling that
he's having trouble fitting in.
Where most of
the viewers who disliked the film seem to have run into trouble is with
the pacing. Wheatley tends to skip over considerable amounts of time
in the space of a quick montage, and explicit exposition is rare. The
high-rise falls into a state of anarchy very quickly, and all the viewer
often has to go on are contextual cues and coded dialogue to decipher
various plots. I don't think it helps that Laing is such a slippery
central figure, who is clearly losing his grip as time goes on.
However, Tom Hiddleston's performance is excellent, always maintaining a
distance from the viewer, and using the character's ambiguity to his
advantage. It takes a while to realize that while Laing is presented as
a potential hero, he becomes at least as demented as anyone else in the
building by the end. You can read the plot as being highly filtered
through his unreliable POV, or as just a further extension of his mental
breakdown.
In short, "High-Rise" is a film
that I think the viewer has to really engage with in order to enjoy it,
and not everyone will. It's full of little details, ominous symbols and
visual motifs that keep coming back in different ways like running
jokes. It's very ambitious in its construction and unapologetically
intelligent, tackling social, political and cultural criticisms, and
ends with a pointed jab at Thatcherism. I could compare this to so many
other movies, and yet the whole is just so much more cohesive and
better fleshed out than most other dystopian films I could name. I
think it could have answered a few of the more obvious questions for
narrative clarity - what is going outside of the building? - but at the
same time I appreciate that Wheatley kept the focus so tight on a small
group of characters. It allows for the interpersonal drama to really
build up to something substantial.
I haven't
even talked about the other performances - Evans, Moss, and Miller are
all in fine form - or the epic production design that makes the
high-rise very much the real star of the film, or the '70s inspired
cinematography, or so many other things that help "High-Rise" stand out
from the crowd. But this review is already running long, and if I go on
for much longer, I run a significant risk of gushing. I can't help
it. This has everything I want in a good genre film, and more.
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