“Right, which one of you bastards is going to fuck me up the arse?!”
Well, I’m glad that damn movie is finally over, as now it’s time for me to type some words. I genuinely groaned when I saw the 2 hour runtime of High-Rise, as it meant I’d be sat with this “very London” movie, heavily-laden with irritating British yuppies, for much longer than I’d like. Which is not at all.
To recap, I watched High-Rise in order to try to understand the baffling hype surrounding it at the time of its release. In my introduction, which you can read here, I feverishly discuss my theory that the hype was connected to a new wave of internet user, who have all managed to destroy social media for shy, awkward, lonely nerds.
So, to be all up-front about it, was there anything about High-Rise to get excited about nine years ago?
No, not at all.
It’s a film that would have worked very well if made back in the 1970s, but its much-trod sociopolitical themes about social hierarchy (the poor characters live on the titular high-rise’s lower floors, while the rich ones live on the upper floors, and the guy right a the top is named “Royal”) and polite citizens devolving into cave-people, is rather out of place in a fairly-even modern Western world. You know, a world where armchair politicians protest against capitalism on their expensive capitalist smartphones. But, regardless of the timeliness of the film’s ideas, the thing that a) I wasn’t looking forward to and b) I ended up actually not liking, was the look of the thing.
Shot like a cross between an aftershave commercial and a standard slick television drama, High-Rise is as visually unimaginative as it could possibly, possibly, possibly be. You know the style: all cool steady-cam wide shots for movement, and handheld medium shaky-cam shots for dialogue scenes. There’s flat, even lighting all over the place, with blown-out windows bringing in crystal-clear daylight, which fails to create the sense of developing claustrophobia at the heart of the film’s concept. Director Ben Wheatley also makes the poor decision to use the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, which opens up all the spaces that should feel near and choking. There’s also no change to the look of the film as events unfold, it’s just more steady-cam, shaky-cam, and soft, even lighting, from start to finish.
Cue eerie, minimalist cover of a classic pop song.
Good grief.
The plot is purposefully vague and misleading, which I’m fine with, but it simply failed to capture my interest. I get that I wasn’t supposed to care for the characters, but I was at least supposed to be interested. And yet I wasn’t. I think Tom Hiddleston’s character was meant to be an entry point for the audience, to functionally immerse them into an ensemble, but, since I wasn’t interested, my attention vanished the moment the film pulls away from Hiddleston to address the cast of characters at large.
The screenplay also suffers from that awful modern trend of having characters say things because the script needs to get somewhere, not because a person would naturally say something like that. The effect of this trait is finding yourself regularly asking: “What? Why would somebody say that?! EVER?!”. Which is a problem you can find in many modern movies in many different genres. Also, characters seem to develop relationships offscreen, to the point where they’ll be doing things, like babysitting for each other, but we never see them getting to know one another well enough to do that. That problem, if you can call it a problem, comes from the fact that, in most films and television shows, characters obviously don’t say anything to each other when we’re not watching. Why would they?! We’re not watching! There’s a moment in High-Rise where two characters meet in one place, then leave to go swimming in another. However, it’s not until one character is in the swimming pool and the other is stood next to it, that the second character, still awkwardly wearing a business suit, decides to announce that they don’t want to go swimming. So what were they both talking about in the half an hour between that first scene and this one? Nothing, that’s what.
I don’t know how to solve that fundamental problem in visual storytelling, but I just wanted to point it out.
The film is also oddly prudish in places, which a 1970s production would have kicked in the bollocks. I get that, in the "modern Salem Witch Trials” of the past ten years, a film production needs to be extra-careful about certain things, but it still has a rather toothless effect. Everybody’s scared these days, but they’re right to be.
How awful, but it’s true.
So, to desperately bring this chore of a review to a close, High-Rise fails in the visual execution of its out-of-date story. Boom. There’s nothing within its 1 hour and 58 minutes to provoke hype from nerds, but that’s certainly not the film’s fault. It has so many other problems of its own.
I guess it would have been better directed by Orson Welles or Terry Gilliam, but most films would be.
Thank goodness this High-Rise has Jeremy Irons in it, who’s mere presence can make even the most miserable and thankless viewing experience bearable.
Read the book, as I might do, because this adaptation clearly gets it wrong.
Or just watch an aftershave commercial.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
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