High-Rise
(2015)
(SPOILERS)
There seem to have been plans to adapt JG Ballard’s High-Rise in getting on for forever, but Ben Wheatley’s achievement
in finally succeeding could well leave you thinking it would have best been
left on the page. Written by regular collaborator, wife Amy Jump, the picture
is a turgid, disconnected mess, one in which the satirical elements are either
so underlined they have long since shuffled off any impact or are tonally
buried by Wheatley’s general uncertainty over quite how to underpin his
ungainly edifice.
There’s a
lot of mood in Wheatley’s film, but it’s mostly bad mood, and it’s so inert dramatically, sometimes it feels as if
you’re watching a tableau. There are lots of well-staged shots, but nothing
holding them together; it becomes meaningless montage. Possibly the
self-consciously retro-’70s (revisited for his latest, Free Fire) setting handicapped him.
Certainly,
there’s a lack of congruence between the (not-so) gradual escalation of anarchy
in the tower block and the oblivious continuance of normal life outside. The
picture isn’t sufficiently heightened in milieu or attitude for the commentary on
isolation and degradation brought on by urban impersonality to resonate, so what
you’re left with is that the narrative makes little logical sense. Like Snowpiercer, we have subtext made text in
a building where the privileged lodge up top while the chattering classes rot
down below, but there’s an instant disconnect in translating that idea from
page to screen. It feels like a stretch that the rich would even share the same
street as the riff-raff, let alone deign to co-exist in a building. And, since
there’s nothing (barring an apocalypse) to stop residents leaving, rather than
wallowing in the spiralling depravity, the picture ends up looking like weightless,
posturing bereft of core integrity.
Wilder: Living
in a high-rise requires a special type of behaviour.
Laing: Acquiescence?
Wilder: Restraint.
Helps if you’re slightly mad.
What is said is announced by Luke Evans’
Richard Wilder, commenting on the kind architecture of that shoves its subjects
together in a combined space and sends them slowly, inexorably mad. Really,
though, this rising urban tension isn’t explored in any kind of visceral or
coherent manner; Royal’s great social experiment is more about the art
direction than an exploration of the crumbling psyche in a deleterious environment.
Wilder’s rapist is “possibly the sanest
man I know” announces restrained, acquiescent Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston),
which tells you a lot about the other residents. Or indeed the cool, detached
Laing (who we first see spit roasting a husky). At least, it would if they were
remotely relatable as characters.
Wheatley
occasionally offers a glimmer of engagement with the material, rather than just
staring it down. Although, as Laing, Tom Hiddleston is in danger of turning
into his own posh caricature of the urbane, smooth equivalent of Hugh Grant’s
comedy stammerer of the ‘90s, his attempts to climb the social ladder are some
of the few episodes that offer any dramatic consequence, be it threatened by
heavy Simmons (Dan Renton Skinner, Bosh from Reeves and Mortimer’s House of Fools, is bizarre casting, but
strangely effective) or playing caustic tennis with Jeremy Irons’ aloof and
cutting architect Royal. But the essential poshness of Hiddleston, who he
exudes the air of those who won’t let him join their gang, undercuts the
tension of his intent.
In
addition, Wheately, possibly due to budget, but more likely owing to a lack of
wherewithal, offers little sense of geography in this all-defining space.
Worse, his various locations, be it rooftop, swimming pool or carpark, only
ever feel like disparate locations, never part of the wholer building.
The rising
tensions and outbreaks of violence lack sufficient build-up (I wasn’t the
greatest fan of Kill List, but one
thing it definitely had was an inescapable sense of escalation), and the
breakdown of this society in microcosm/building form are fractured and
unconvincing.
There’s orgiastic
violence as well as orgiastic orgies. And lots of eating of pets, but it’s all
profoundly unaffecting. We see rotting fruit in the on-site supermarket at one
point, but only much later are there fights over food (and paint). Any sequence
or shot only ever seems to be about that
sequence or shot (there’s a beautiful piece of kaleidoscopic violence when
Wilder meets his end, but it’s a propos nothing). I don’t suppose it matters if
you’re uninterested in assembling something that hangs together, but as it is,
this has no more dramatic tension than, say The
Bedsitting Room; High-Rise is at
least as unsubtle with its targets, when indeed it is hitting its targets.
The cast
are mostly pretty good, meriting the adaption with more talent than it
deserves. Evans is surprisingly strong (I say that because he hasn’t fared too
well of late in starring roles), embodying something of a ‘70s Oliver Reed in Wilder’s
feral, pugilistic menace (since he was aiming for this, the boy Evans done
well), and James Purefoy is reliably superior and disdainful. Some roles (notably
those of Elizabeth Moss and Keeley Hawes) are undernourished, while some, such
as Reece Shearsmith, stick out like a sore thumb, his performance far too broad
for Wheatley’s style. Maybe Shearsmith had the right idea, but for the wrong
director; maybe approaching High-Rise
like an extended episode of League of
Gentlemen would have done it favours. Certainly, Wheatley appears to have
been the wrong director.
Or perhaps
it’s just that Ballard’s satire has dated? Not in terms of the themes lacking topicality,
but in the crudeness of the presentation. Lines such as “I conceived this building as a crucible for change - I must have missed some vital element”
might have seemed pertinent in ’75, but are bleeding obvious regarding the
failures of modern social planning now (Wheatley even adds a Thatcher quote at
the end, as if the gist wasn’t evident enough).
Which may explain
why Wheatley went period, but the decision doesn’t help matters. And with it,
the tipping point of man revelling in technological progress before falling
prey to the same in primitive regress, when the former goes bad, is rendered
rather arbitrarily (it isn’t the most insightful of insights anyway, much
explored, and the third act for most Alex Garland screenplays). Wheatley’s made
a picture of messy transitions (he must take the blame for the editing) and narrative
incontinence; High-Rise has no rhythm,
no form. It’s shapeless. Perhaps, as was once suggested, it is indeed
unfilmable?
Would
Nicolas Roeg’s version have been better? I’m bound to think so, particularly
since Paul Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell
to Earth, Eureka) wrote that
screenplay). Or Richard Stanley’s script for Vincenzo Natali? Stanley offers
hope, Natali’s previous form less so. Bruce Robinson also penned a screenplay
in the late ‘70s. Cronenberg’s clinical indifference might have done the
material a service, if he hadn’t already done a horror in an apartment block (Shivers, released the same year as
Ballard’s novel). As it is, I’d sooner rewatch Sylvester McCoy in the goofy Doctor Who take on the premise (Paradise Towers), which at least refuses
to get bogged down in its own self-importance (it hardly could, not with
Richard Briers hamming it up the way he does). At least that story had a
sufficiently absurdist approach; someone who can make the abstract elements of
Ballard work for rather than against the adaptation. I hadn’t bought into the
cult of Wheatley before this, and at this point I suspect it’s never going to
happen.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.