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High-Rise

A birthday treat. Lunch in Leederville with the good wife (not the bad one) and then a choc-bomb assisted screening of Ben Wheatley's High-Rise. In the smallest cinema I've ever been in - screen 4 at the Luna Leederville. And it's quite a trip. I'm not a big fan of Wheatley, disliking Down Terrace and Kill List but on the basis of High-Rise, I'll most likely check out his other work too.

The story, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard, is nominally of class strata and ultimately class warfare, with Tom Hiddlestone pitching in as a kind of middle class cypher - to begin with. There are some potty scenes within the titular high-rise, including a kids' party that ends in the drowning of a dog (cardinal sin of film - killing a dog).

It sets things up really well in the first hour - characters are introduced with little fuss and some aplomb (Luke Evans and Jeremy Irons among them). The sets (and the poster) are reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange's ugly British 70s look. Details look just a bit out - food in the supermarket, the minimalist furniture, even the towers themselves, which Irons explains were supposed to be like the fingers of an open hand with a lake as the palm. There's a lot of good stuff in this film.

But it misses the mark in a few places, I reckon. The pace and flow of the film is dragged down a bit from the middle to near the end, so much so that I almost nodded off. Maybe it's due to too much ostentatious surrealism, too much weird frenzy. And while there are some great lines - "When I was your age, I was always covered in something. Mud, jam, failure." - there are also some pretentious duds - "What are in these boxes anyway?" "Sex and paranoia".

The final shot carries a bit of weight. A nerdy kid has finally made his toy radio and he sits atop some kind of tennis umpire's chair listening to a snippet of one of Thatcher's speeches, which goes as follows:

There is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism. The difference lies in whether the capital is in the hands of the State or whether the greater part of it is in the hands of people outside of State control. Where there is State capitalism there will never be political freedom. Where there is private capitalism there may not be political freedom, but there cannot be political freedom without it.

The soon-to-be PM uttered this shite in November 1976 in a House of Commons speech, after the book was written (1975), so it must be an addition by Wheatley. Suitably garbled guff to go with this batty film.

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