High-RiseThe balance between civilization and anarchy is more tenuous than one might think, and it is a quick slip down into chaos from up high given a good enough push. High-Rise is the story of straight-laced physiologist, Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston), who moves into one of a collection of modern high-rise apartment complexes, furnished with such varied amenities as swimming pools, squash courses, and even a floor with a supermarket, where parties rage all the time. But when the gap between the less fortunate groundlings clash with the well-to-do denizens of the upper floors, the contemporary dream topples, leaving a nightmare of rubble behind.
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High-Rise is adapted from the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard written in 1975; in keeping with the inception of the novel, the film is set in roughly the same period, exemplified in the fashions and decor popular for the time, as well as the perception that the Seventies were prone to hedonistic orgies of groovy partying. Originally intended to be filmed by director Nicolas Roeg decades prior, director Ben Wheatley provides the same kind of sense of unease and paranoia-evoking editing felt in films like Bad Timing and Don't Look Now, further underscoring an era-specific tone in High-Rise. Compared to his fellow flat neighbors, Laing seems a bit like a stuffed shirt, although he is likely still grieving after the loss of his sister. He claims he made the high-rise his home to make a fresh start, although from what is left ambiguous. Laing remains largely a cipher, like a litmus test for the high-rise, as if his response will be the most neutral indication of what kind of effect this sociological experiment will manifest. Laing is invited into the folds of both the (literally) down-to-earth people of his floor and below--including the seductive Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller), the persistently pregnant Helen Wilder (Elisabeth Moss), and her hot-headed husband, Richard (Luke Evans)--as well as capturing the interest of the high-rise's own architect, the reclusive Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons), who lives in the palatial penthouse, surrounded by opulence. But the truth is that Laing never really seems comfortable among either caste, and both parties suspect him of being a pawn in the other group's control, a double agent. Desperate as he is to rebuke his recruitment into one circle or the other, sitting on the fence forces Laing to be resolute in his determination to fit in with the increasingly mad complex or be ripped apart in the current. High-Rise is a dystopian view of a world slightly familiar, slightly futuristic, one which disintegrates into an apocalyptic mess of detritus and decay, somewhat like that of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. A crucial difference, however, is that while the high-rise is undergoing a volatile transformation, it is localized in the microcosm of the building; the rest of the world presumably carries on with their lives, with this warped sociological experiment of Royal's being the controlled battleground for violent change and revolution. Although the high-rise is equipped to support its residents quite comfortably, the cropping up of food shortages and power outages affecting the poorer tenants is one of the key elements which provokes a hostile response, making a clear distinction between "us" and "them", instilling the sense of resentment and rage against the others. The inevitable breakdown of social order is like watching a condensed kernel of how revolutions begin, and one wonders if somehow, deep down, Royal didn't secretly want these "glitches" in his system, as the change he longed to foment becomes real and visceral before his eyes.
The sense that the high-rise is a perfect microcosm makes it appealing, the kind of place which one would be crazy to want to leave--a perfect, insulated bubble. Yet the immersion in such a claustrophobic realm--where escape is something which becomes more elusive--gives High-Rise a "cabin fever" element, a sense of imprisonment where sanity slips away as the same walls become the only reality which matters. This subsequent insanity and violence recalls yet another adaptation by Stanley Kubrick: The Shining. The feeling that High-Rise is also a social and economic parable is something which is more pronounced having been made decades after the book was written, although it is no less relevant in any age where a monarch-figure (like the aptly named Royal) establishes an artificial power structure for his communistic fiefdom, where the power players act with the arrogance and superiority of medieval aristocrats. (At one costume party, they also dress and act the parts without the least sense of irony.) Laing is a kind of "prince" in this domain, albeit a reluctant one, and as the preamble suggests, he is born to inherit the high-rise following its cataclysmic transformation. This reading has extra weight since Tom Hiddleston looks a bit like Jeremy Irons, albeit younger. Even Charlotte's boy, Toby (Louis Suc), looks a bit like them both as well, making these men of different generations the veritable dynasty of this splinter world. The structures that make up the high-rise complex are observed by Royal to be like fingers grasping up from the earth, as though it were some demonic power reaching from the depths of Hell itself to claim the masses of consumers willing to destroy their fellows in their desperate ascension, almost literally on the backs of others. The high-rise recalls the myth of the Tower of Babel, with Royal as the grand architect clawing at the fabric of heaven with his mighty skyscrapers, as if he can scrape away some residue of divinity from the clouds above. It is too simple to say that High-Rise condemns communism or capitalism wholly on an ideological level, although it becomes clear that it is never a good idea to afford power to a party all too willing to sacrifice the welfare one for the other, a political viewpoint desperately in demand these days. Laing half-jokingly describes his new home as one consisting of "mania, narcissism, and power failure", and that assessment could no doubt also be applied to the perceptions of government even today, forever spiraling down into a quagmire of destruction, willing to cannibalize the tenets of civilization in pursuit of combating those on the other side of the fence...or other floor.
Recommended for: Fans of a darkly comic dystopian faux-period piece; a kind of ant farm of people driven mad by consumerist frenzy, claustrophobia, and probably also a good deal of drugs. Laing's neutral center is the eye of the hurricane around which the whole world spins into chaos.
The sense that the high-rise is a perfect microcosm makes it appealing, the kind of place which one would be crazy to want to leave--a perfect, insulated bubble. Yet the immersion in such a claustrophobic realm--where escape is something which becomes more elusive--gives High-Rise a "cabin fever" element, a sense of imprisonment where sanity slips away as the same walls become the only reality which matters. This subsequent insanity and violence recalls yet another adaptation by Stanley Kubrick: The Shining. The feeling that High-Rise is also a social and economic parable is something which is more pronounced having been made decades after the book was written, although it is no less relevant in any age where a monarch-figure (like the aptly named Royal) establishes an artificial power structure for his communistic fiefdom, where the power players act with the arrogance and superiority of medieval aristocrats. (At one costume party, they also dress and act the parts without the least sense of irony.) Laing is a kind of "prince" in this domain, albeit a reluctant one, and as the preamble suggests, he is born to inherit the high-rise following its cataclysmic transformation. This reading has extra weight since Tom Hiddleston looks a bit like Jeremy Irons, albeit younger. Even Charlotte's boy, Toby (Louis Suc), looks a bit like them both as well, making these men of different generations the veritable dynasty of this splinter world. The structures that make up the high-rise complex are observed by Royal to be like fingers grasping up from the earth, as though it were some demonic power reaching from the depths of Hell itself to claim the masses of consumers willing to destroy their fellows in their desperate ascension, almost literally on the backs of others. The high-rise recalls the myth of the Tower of Babel, with Royal as the grand architect clawing at the fabric of heaven with his mighty skyscrapers, as if he can scrape away some residue of divinity from the clouds above. It is too simple to say that High-Rise condemns communism or capitalism wholly on an ideological level, although it becomes clear that it is never a good idea to afford power to a party all too willing to sacrifice the welfare one for the other, a political viewpoint desperately in demand these days. Laing half-jokingly describes his new home as one consisting of "mania, narcissism, and power failure", and that assessment could no doubt also be applied to the perceptions of government even today, forever spiraling down into a quagmire of destruction, willing to cannibalize the tenets of civilization in pursuit of combating those on the other side of the fence...or other floor.
Recommended for: Fans of a darkly comic dystopian faux-period piece; a kind of ant farm of people driven mad by consumerist frenzy, claustrophobia, and probably also a good deal of drugs. Laing's neutral center is the eye of the hurricane around which the whole world spins into chaos.