Directed by Ben Wheatley, 2015, 119 minutes
Robert Laing (Tom Hiddlestone), a lecturer in surgery, moves into a new apartment that is part of a prestige high-rise development. As residents gradually cut themselves off from the outside world, territorial squabbles escalate into open warfare as various factions compete for control of the building.
From the vantage of the early twenty-first century, the fictions of J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) seem remarkably prescient. He describes worlds where advertising manipulates consumers into purchasing products that they do not need to prop up a failing economy and scant, overpriced living space traded for huge profits. Ballard is a wry social observer and a master of extrapolation. His precise prose charts the anxieties of late twentieth and early twenty first century culture and like Laing, the protagonist of ‘High Rise’ (1975) leaves us with the feeling that we are living in “a future that has already taken place” as he relentlessly reworks themes of dysfunctional modernity and societal breakdown.
Veteran producer Jeremy Thomas had been working to bring ‘High Rise’ to the screen since its publication; it’s fascinating to speculate what Nicholas Roeg or Richard Stanley would have made of it but a more likely candidate would have been David Cronenberg: His film ‘Shivers’ (1975) shares a similar setting and themes and Thomas later produced Cronenberg’s definitive Ballard adaptation ‘Crash’ in 1996. Writer Amy Jump and Director Ben Wheatley choose not to emulate the cool detachment of Cronenberg’s film, but they bring exhilarating energy and raucous humour to their ‘High Rise’. Where ‘Crash’ feels cold and smooth ‘High Rise’ feels hot and ragged, closer to the broad satire of Lindsay Anderson’s ‘Oh Lucky Man’ (1973) or ‘Britannia Hospital’ (1982). Jump and Wheatley reinvigorate Ballard’s novel by setting the action in an alternative 1970s. Historical hindsight sharpens Ballard’s prophecy to reveal parallels between past and present. The seventies saw the end of an economic consensus that advocated a strong welfare state, nationalisation and state intervention as economies buckled under the strain of a global oil crisis and economic stagnation. John Maynard Keynes fell from favour, replaced by the neoliberal monetarism of Friedrich Hayek as championed by Margaret Thatcher’s government from 1979. This economic dogma has continued under both Labour and Conservative governments ever since, nurturing an extreme form of market capitalism that permeates every element of British life at the start of the 21st century. As governmental austerity bites and Britain faces an uncertain future outside Europe ‘High Rise’ revisits Ballard’s critique of the class system and underlines the sense of imminent crisis in his work.
Often apocalyptic, Ballard’s work is shaped by formative childhood experiences of Shanghai under Japanese occupation as chronicled in his novel ‘Empire of the Sun’ (1984). ‘High Rise’ is unlike other catastrophes imagined in British post-war fiction such as John Wyndham’s ‘Day of the Triffids’ (1951) or John Christopher’s ‘Death of Grass’ (1956) which describe valiant attempts to reassert ‘civilized’ values in the face of disaster. ‘High Rise’ depicts a more violent fracture; closer to Charles Platt’s novel ‘The Gas’ (1971) with its excess of carnality and violence or Mega City One’s block wars in British comic 2000 AD. Power cuts and uncollected rubbish foreshadow the traumatic industrial disputes of 1978 and 1979 when workers protested against pay constraints forced on Britain’s Labour government by a catastrophic economic recession. Ballard subverts the notion that the British class structure will maintain order in the face of chaos. The high-rise contains only upper- and middle-class residents but soon creates its own microclimate of class prejudice. Ballard understands that humans define themselves in relationship to the other and seek out someone to blame when things go wrong. The absence of visible racial diversity in the film reinforces Ballard’s argument by removing the usual scapegoats; it reflects the limits of racial integration in seventies Britain where immigrants were blamed for economic decline and workplace discrimination was rife, despite legislative attempts to promote tolerance.
In keeping with Ballard’s novel, ‘High Rise’ is inhabited by archetypes rather than characters. Jump and Wheatley choose Laing as the primary viewpoint for the film. We recognise his need for social acceptance and his awkwardness, beautifully expressed in the moment when he realises that his pants are undone as he poses in his designer kitchen. His watchful reserve masks an acute facility for adaptation: Laing finds equilibrium once the high rise has descended into chaos, more at ease cooking a dog than attending aristocratic parties. Most viewers will find him more palatable than pungent seventies man Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) who plays a prominent role in the novel but appears monstrous to modern sensibilities. Wilder is the ultimate social climber, a grotesque exaggeration of everything that the British establishment feared in 1979: Product of an education system that promoted social mobility, allowing working class men and women to influence public opinion through media and politics; Wilder embodies the seventies fashion for cultural iconoclasm. When Ballard was writing he would have seemed an imminent threat to social order, for modern viewers he seems a more alien figure and we are left uncertain which is more dangerous: Wilder’s violent revolutionary rage or Laing’s insidious desire to fit in. Many of the women in ‘High Rise’ remain in positions of servitude: Helen Wilder (Elisabeth Moss) has been left behind by the sexual revolution, medicated and exhausted by motherhood whilst her husband plays the field. The female characters ultimately prove themselves the better survivors, which reflects changing gender roles in British society but the violence of their ascent and a bleak postscript from Margaret Thatcher portend a predatory and unforgiving matriarchy.
The building’s social elite are led by Pangbourne (James Purefoy), a gynaecologist who believes that ‘a firmer hand’ will restore social order. Pangbourne represents the outraged and fearful establishment who voted for Thatcher in 1979 to thwart the ‘liberal intellectuals’ and bring the ungrateful peasantry to heel. Architect Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) and his wife Anne (Keeley Hawes) are the building’s moribund monarchy as they cavort in 18th century aristocratic garb or amble around their rooftop Petit Trianon. For Ballard, Royal represents the social planning and public housing experiments that were part of our cityscapes before the ascendancy of market in 1979. Royal believes that the violent competition of the high-rise marks a new and chaotic order of human evolution which embraces Thatcher’s assertion that “…there is no such thing as society” and that “people must look to themselves first”. Living space becomes more valuable as you climb higher up the building, which encourages compartmentalised, private living and social competition rather than community. In the film the high-rise becomes a metaphor for social inequality in post-millennial Britain where insufficient social housing, property inflation and extortionate rents make even the most basic accommodation unaffordable. Many are homeless and poorly maintained public housing like Grenfell Tower places residents at risk whilst the wealthy are immured in fortified enclaves of self-interest.
Ballard makes you examine society with a more critical eye, like a scientist studying bacteria in a petri dish. Reading or watching ‘High Rise’ in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave Europe you are immediately struck by his perceptiveness: The serried ranks of parked cars, petty internecine bickering, narcissistic hedonism and pathological isolationism take on renewed significance. Fortunately, Jump and Wheatley face the horror with a robust sense of humour: There is some lunatic frugging, and mugging (particularly from Purefoy and Evans) and one of the most hilariously grotesque orgies ever filmed. Your response to ‘High Rise’ will depend on your tendency towards social optimism or pessimism. Some will hear a call to arms, the rest of us will take refuge in cynical detachment or raucous laughter as we consider the folly of our neighbours.
Quotes
“For all it’s inconveniences Laing was satisfied with life in the high-rise, now that so many of the tenants were out of the way, he felt able to relax. More in charge of himself, ready to move forward and explore life.” Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston)
“As you can see, the facial mask simply slips off the skull” Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston)
“Don’t worry. People don’t usually care what happens two floors above or below them” Helen Wilder (Elisabeth Moss)
Connections:
Film
‘A Clockwork Orange’ directed by Stanley Kubrick (1971)
‘Oh Lucky Man’ directed by Lindsay Anderson (1973)
‘Shivers’ directed by David Cronenberg (1975)
‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ directed by Philip Kauffman (1978)
‘Memoirs of a Survivor’ directed by David Gladwell (1981)
‘Britannia Hospital’ directed by Lindsay Anderson (1982)
‘Crash’ directed by David Cronenberg (1996)
‘The Village’ directed by M. Night Shyamalan (2004)
‘Dredd’ directed by Pete Travis (2012)
‘Sightseers’ directed by Ben Wheatley (2012)
‘Future Shock! The Story of 2000 AD’ directed by Paul Goodwin (2014)
Reading
J.G. Ballard, High Rise, Firebird, 1985 (1975), ISBN 9780586044568
J.G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, W.W. Norton, 2010, ISBN 9780393339291
Clive Barker, ‘In the Hills, the Cities’ in ‘Books of Blood’ volume 1, Sphere, 1988, ISBN 9780751514353
Martin Barker, Action – The Story of a violent comic, Titan Books, 1990, ISBN 9781852860233
Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies, Faber, 2009, ISBN 9780571221363
Laurel Foster and Sue Harper (editors), British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, ISBN 9781443817349
Martin Jones, Psychedelic Decadence in Sixties and Seventies Britain, Headpress, 2001, ISBN 1900486148
Charles Pratt, The Gas, Savoy, 1971, ISBN 0861300238
John Shepherd, Crisis? What Crisis? The Callaghan Government and the British ‘Winter of Discontent’, Manchester University Press, 2013, ISBN 9780719082474
John Wagner et al., Judge Dredd the Complete Case Files volume 5, 2000AD Graphic Novels, 2006, ISBN 978-1905437085
Music
Kate Bush, Lionheart, EMI, 1978
David Bowie, The Lodger, RCA, 1979
Games
The ‘Bioshock’ series are set in Rapture and Columbia, both failing, self-contained experimental utopias akin to Ballard’s high-rise.
Web
Explore the history of the Barbican Complex in London, an example of a planned social housing development:
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