Review of High-Rise (2015) by Bob K — 22 May 2016

There's something redundantly ironic about attending a late-night show in Berkeley of a film about a dystopian society. One emerges from the theater, looks around, and thinks "so what?".

Truly, I enjoyed this movie very much, despite some significant flaws. The already tense relations between sections of a modern highrise, where your floor determines your station, are completely torn asunder at the slightest provocation - a power outage. But this isn't the class consciousness piece that Snowpiercer is. There is awful behavior to be found all around, and not really a sense of uprising so much as gleeful chaos. That's still pretty entertaining, though. My favorite quote, from Jeremy Irons, who plays the architect living in the penthouse:

"This is my party, and you are my guests. I will be the one to decide who is lobotomized.".

Much of the film is impressionistic, so don't expect plot resolutions or meaningful outcomes. Expect instead a crowd of Louis XIV era costumed fops partying to an orchestral rendition of ABBA's "S.O.S." in the top floor, while 30 floors below, a hugely pregnant mother tries to deal with dozens of kids attending a birthday party in her apartment, tearing the place apart, in a foreshadowing of the carnage to come.

I have not read the J. G. Ballard novel this is based on, but I have read Neal Stephenson's "The Big U" which this reminded me of very much.