HIGH RISE

High Rise - second (1)

For the High-Rise soundtrack, Portishead created a haunting cover of ABBA’s 1975 hit ‘SOS’, a song that represented the glamour and disintegration of the period for the director, Ben Wheatley.

It becomes a haunting refrain in this highly risible adaptation of J G Ballard’s dystopian novel, written by Amy Jump.

There’s not a lot of glamour but plenty of disintegration as we move through the stories of this brutal monolithic structure, architecture as allegory in the rise of Thatcherism.

The appropriately named Royal, played with regal indifference by Jeremy Irons, is the architect with the edifice complex, creator of this tower and occupier of its highest level. The levels are signifiers of status, the highest rung is where the Royals live, the closest to the ground are the lower classes.

Into this stark environment comes Dr. Robert Laing, played with suave sophistication by Tom Hiddleston. Moving into his new apartment seeking soulless anonymity, he soon find that the building’s residents have no intention of leaving him alone.

If nature abhors a vacuum, it is because of buildings like this – self contained, with their own insular infrastructure- vacuum sealed against the outside world, a vacuous and vicious community.

The hierarchy of the high rise creates a complex social dynamic around him, and Laing is literally seduced into becoming neighbourly by single mother, Charlotte, a vivacious portrayal by Sienna Miller.

As he struggles to establish his position, Laing’s urbanity and sanity begin to disintegrate along with the building.
Power fluctuations within the residents are mirrored in power failures in the building – elevators stop, illumination falters, chaos and anarchy ensue.

The look of HIGH-RISE is reminiscent of Jerzy Skolomovski’s Deep End and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, both seminal films from the Seventies, as well as wink and a nod to Karel Reisz‘ black comedy Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, which is referenced by its movie poster adorning a wall of an apartment occupied by a disaffected documentary film maker called Wilder, portrayed by Luke Evans with a whiff of the Oliver Reeds.