High-Rise is based on J. G. Ballard’s 1975 novel of the same name. Tom Hiddleston (who seems to be everywhere: The Night Manager, I Saw the Light, Crimson Peak) plays Dr. Robert Laing, a professor at a school of physiology, moves into the new high-rise. In a key scene, Hiddleston gruesomely removes the face from a corpse. One of his students faints as a result. That’s just foreshadowing the horrors ahead in this movie. The high-rise is organized on class lines: the rich and powerful occupy the top floors, the poorer tenants are relegated to the lower floors. When the power goes out, chaos results. Sex, drugs, and violence dominate the rest of the film. Elizabeth Moss plays a pregnant woman whose crazed husband (Luke Evans) tries to document the social dysfunction of the high-rise. Hiddleston (and many men) hook up with high-rise maven Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller) as social constraints erode. Jeremy Irons, the Architect, occupies with penthouse with his selfish wife and her posse of sycophants. As the disorder increases, the sex-charged atmosphere ratchets up along with the violence.
High-Rise follows A Clockwork Orange and David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Ballard’s Crash. This is a grim and relentless film. GRADE: B
I really admire Ballard but can’t sat say I have ever really enjoyed reading his work and this is one I have not attempted – very curious about the film though as I like the actors and director. Thanks George, perhaps a rental …
Sergio, I’ve read a lot of J. G. Ballard over the years. His work distances the reader from the various realities Ballard creates. One of the great Ballard themes is entropy: the culture, the world, the universe running out of gas. As you might suspect, this doesn’t make for cheery reading.
Sounds uplifting.
Bill, it’s uplifting if you’re one of the people who live in the HIGH-RISE penthouse. If you live on lower floors, life is nasty, brutish, and short.
I like Ballard’s work, especially his first four books (including THE DROWNED WORLD and THE WIND FROM NOWHERE) which are quite prescient about the results, if not the causes, of environmental disasters, but his work can be outlandishly violent and that doesn’t always translate well visually. This is definitely a “watch on Netflix” for me.
Deb, I totally agree with you on Ballard’s early work like THE DROWNED WORLD and THE WIND FROM NOWHERE. Scary good. But Ballard’s work in the Seventies turned to social commentary with extreme violence mixed in. The cast of HIGH-RISE is very good, but the story is a downer.
I almost saw it in Krakow. (Yes, I couldn’t go two weeks without seeing a movie). But wrestling with subtitles seemed like too much work for a movie I could see later in English. Not real appealing though.
Patti, despite the top-notch cast, HIGH-RISE requires a sensibility similar to fans of TEXAS CHAIN-SAW MASSACRE.
I had no idea this movie even existed. I agree on Ballard. I read this one four years ago and it is definitely a downer. I can see Irons as the penthouse guy. I’ve been meaning to read his DROWNED WORLD next. Of course, when you see (or read) his autobiographical EMPIRE OF THE SUN, you get a lot of possible insight to his mind.
Patti, we saw AMERICAN GRAFFITI for the first time in Paris. It was in English with French subtitles, but my eyes automatically went to the subtitles!
Jeff, back in the Sixties, no one could beat the Brits at destroying the world in their SF. Ballard, John Wyndham, John Christopher, etc. wrote about world-ending calamities with gusto.
I know I’ve probably posted this before, but in her book, WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT?, Jo Walton posits the theory that after WWII, when the social order changed and attention had to be paid to the poorer classes, many writers (chiefly upper-middle-class British males) could not handle having to treat the lumpenprole with dignity and so devised plots where most of the world was wiped out (by plague, aliens, nuclear disaster, environmental catastrophe, etc.), leaving only a few stiff-upper-lip types to save what remained of the world. A provocative theory and not one I completely agree with, but there’s no doubt that after WWII British sf writers had a field day figuring out how to annihilate 95% or more of the planet.
Deb, I completely agree with you and Jo Walton. But the Fifties SF dealt with nuclear annihilation and civilization ending scenarios, too. The Sixties end-of-the-world SF had a different flavor, especially from the class-conscious Brits.
I read a bunch of John Wyndham books like that in the 70s.
Jeff, John Wyndham invented a lot of ways to end the world. They freaked me out when I first read Wyndham’s catastrophic SF.
Knowing his reputation for grim, depressing novels, I have stuck with his short fiction, where he often focuses on character and twist, or surprise (shock) endings. In small doses he can be brilliant. This film, and the book on which it’s based? I’ll pass.
Rick, I prefer J. G. Ballard in shorter doses, too. As Deb noted, Ballard’s first four SF novels from the Sixties dazzle the reader.
I’d heard of this, but your review went into more detail, without spoiling it. This is going to have to be an hbo/starz one, as I can see I’ll only be able to watch in short doses over several days. the cast is a big part of the draw for me (other than eliz. moss)
Maggie, the cast of HIGH-RISE is outstanding. But the theme is a downer.
George, I have never read Ballard. I have overlooked him in spite of coming across his books frequently in secondhand bookshops and book exhibitions.
Go for the short fiction, Prashant, if you can find either a collection of his stories or an anthology with a story or wo of his.
Rick, good advice!
Prashant, I urge you to give J. G. Ballard a try. Start with Ballard’s short fiction and if you enjoy that move on to his early novels.