It’s a multi-storey CARCRASH
High-Rise has towering ambitions and hunk du jour Tom Hiddleston, but it has so many flaws that...
As a rule, I tend not to begin at the end of any film, keen not to give away too much of the plot or generally spoil the cinemavisiting fun. But with High-Rise I’ll make an exception, because I’ve seen it twice now and on both occasions it’s the very last scene that highlights the problem with so much of what has gone before.
Compared to the visual extravaganza that precedes it, it’s a simple shot of an old-fashioned Tannoy over which come the unmistakable tones of Margaret Thatcher extolling the virtues of capitalism and the free market. On both occasions it’s struck me as a heavy-handed device – ‘Oh, so it was a political satire all along…’ we’re presumably meant to think – and, on both occasions I’ve found myself thinking: ‘Hang on a minute, I’ve been watching this for the best part of two hours, shouldn’t I have been able to work that out for myself by now?’
That’s the problem with this adaptation of the 1975 JG Ballard novel of the same name. Somewhere along the provocatively violent, sexfestooned way, its deeper meaning seems to have gone missing. It’s a shame because when it’s not being deliberately unpleasant, at times it’s stunning to look at and features two very watchable performances from thespian-of-the-moment Tom Hiddleston – currently delivering a fine extended audition to be the next James Bond in The Night Manager on BBC1 – and Welsh actor and Fast And
Furious star Luke Evans. As a writer, Ballard liked to shock, so in Ben Wheatley, the director whose previous films such as Kill List and Sightseers could never be described as middle-of-the-road, he seems to have found – albeit posthumously – the ideal collaborator for this attack on modernism, technology and social engineering.
The result is a film that has made precious little in the way of creative compromises and may have damaged its commercial prospects in the process. But given a supporting cast that includes Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons and Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss, I wouldn’t bet totally against it.
As the title suggests, High-Rise is set almost entirely in a brand new tower block, where the promise of a near-perfect, self-contained world of gyms, swimming pools and even a 15th-floor supermarket has attracted eager buyers.
But, just as it is in the real world, the higher up you go and the better the view, the more expensive the properties become.
So the debt-laden poor are on the lower floors, the hard-working middle class in the middle and the over-paid and often idle rich on the upper floors; a dangerous social divide that the book establishes rather more clearly than the film. Atop them all, in a penthouse equipped with the sort of huge walled garden in which Marie Antoinette would feel instantly at home, lives the building’s architect, Royal (Irons), and his unhappy wife (Keeley Hawes).
Into this claustrophobically enclosed community moves Laing (Hiddleston), a doctor of physiology with a fondness for dissecting skulls in truly horrible detail but also a handsome and single chap who instantly goes down terribly well with many of the block’s female residents. Charlotte (Miller), the glamorous single mum who lives upstairs, has definitely noticed his arrival, as has Helen (Moss), the
pregnantandlong -suffering wife of Wilder(Evans),the libidinous ,alpha-maledocumen - tary-makerwhoser ovingeye…well,itcouldn’ tbemoreroving.
However,theinevitable sexual shenanigans aresimply the beginning of along slide in to whatbegins as decadence (great givers of alcohol anddrug-fuelled parties ar ethe to wer’s residents)before disintegratingin to total socia lcollapse .Thebuildingmirr orsthismor aldecayasthe rubbishchutegetsblock ed,theliftsstopw orkingandthepo wercutsbegin.Andwhile Romeburns, the residentscertainlyfiddle …mainly witheachother.
IkeepwonderingwhyIdidn’tenjoythismore.Ilovedthefashion,theclassiccars–apart fromthe grisly ,ultra-slow-motion moment when a suicidemakesaterriblemessofalovelyTriumphStag–andtheto werblocksthemselves, which,thanks to clever visua leffects ,comecomplete withastylish,Corbusier -like overhang. But thepaceisslow,thestorysometimesascon - fusedasthechar acters’ individual motivations ,and any intended satiregets lost amid both the unpleasantness and visual excess.
High-Rise wouldclearlylik etobeanotherIf,LindsayAnderson’sviolentattackonthepublicschoolsystem,butIcan’ thelpfeelingthatas societydisintegrateswithintheto werblock,so doestheunderlyingfilm.Hencetheneedforthatlast-minuteblastofMrsThatcher,Isuppose.
But, if it is a failure,it’s certainly an interesting one.