Review of High-Rise (2015) by Jools A — 06 Jun 2016

The late J.G. Ballard has a lot to convey in his novels which are usually associated with the New Wave of science fiction. I admire his provocative ideas of using allegorical circumstances (usually enclosed and confined environments) to translate the effects of technological and social developments on psyche and humanity landscapes. Such is dwelled upon in his 1975 novel High-Rise, which has been cited as an influence upon the Doctor Who serial Paradise Towers. British producer Jeremy Thomas had early intentions since the 70s itself of bringing Ballard's story to the big screens, but it wasn't until arthouse director Ben Wheatley (2011 Kill List, 2013 A Field in England) started investing interest and attempted to look into who held the rights to the book that the adaptation finally took shape and materialized.

The titular high-tech concrete skyscraper is a 40-story tower which inhabited 2,000 residents set amid a bleak and soul-dead outskirt of some modern metropolis. Dr Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moves in without much backstory, except we know that he is still recovering from his sister's recent demise. Appearing indifferent in nature and perhaps trying to get away from some unwanted past, he seems to have found what he was looking for with his new abode, solitude. The building promises a self-contained lifestyle, equipped with a swimming pool, a full-scale supermarket, high-speed elevators and even a primary school. In his process of getting acquainted with his neighbors, he meets (and gets cozy with) single mom Charlotte (Sienna Miller) who lives right upstairs of his unit, along with financially struggling couple Richard and Helen (Luke Evans and Elisabeth Moss) who live closer to the ground. He even gets invited to see the tower's architect Anthony (Jeremy Irons) who lives in the penthouse lavished with a palatial garden and a pet horse. Life in the building starts to degrade almost immediately into an incongruous blend where a brutal caste order emerges amongst the top, middle and lower floors. While the upper classes in the top floors bask in lavish lifestyles like period costume parties, lower classes at the bottom observe in disdain as they continue with their somewhat less-complete conditions. What entails is a series of power cuts and skirmish which jolt the already unsteady equilibrium and hastily escalate into a social stratification mayhem.

This is an almost impossible book to be adapted. Though Ballard's story is laden with peculiarities and alternating focus, it is driven with a purposeful design. In fact that is one of the forces behind Ballard's success, where his theories and stories would wound up becoming true. Take for instance his 1962 novel The Drowned World which warned us about global warming. Below the surface, the building's inhabitants are impetuously disintegrating. Every aspect of the story is heavily metaphorical, from the building itself to the characters and their morbid transitions. The single aspect of how Dr Laing relate to the building's impervious character itself is an integral part of the story. This is however my main issue with Wheatley's interpretation, where the residents' descent into pandemonium is carried out in a way that will leave audience fatigued if not irked. The director of Kill List and Sightseers somehow became obsessed with his buffet of mayhem served in fetish and deviance instead of paying heed in developing the already perplexed plot. Wheatley shared during an interview, "High-Rise actually has these almost Hollywood-style arcs of development. But then Ballard is very slippery. Just as you invest in a character and think they are going to be one thing they turn into something else, which appealed to me because it's much more like life. Only in movies is there an alpha dog hero..." I personally couldn't agree more with that statement, just that I find his execution rather incoherent.