{"id":2683,"date":"2015-09-29T22:49:21","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T22:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2015\/09\/29\/fantastic-fest-review-high-rise\/"},"modified":"2015-09-29T22:49:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T22:49:21","slug":"fantastic-fest-review-high-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2015\/09\/29\/fantastic-fest-review-high-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"FANTASTIC FEST REVIEW: HIGH-RISE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Weinberg \/ Nerdist<\/em><\/p>\n

The haves and the have-nots generally don\u2019t live in the same neighborhoods, for obvious reasons, and the fascinating new thriller High-Rise<\/em> offers a stark, extreme, and satirical explanation as to why this is the case. Based on the 1975 J.G. Ballard novel of the same name,\u00a0Ben Wheatley\u2018s odd and challenging High-Rise<\/em> manages to sum up the history of humanity\u2019s class struggles in less than two hours: the wealthy people control the resources, the poor people demand fairer dispensation of those resources, conflicts arise, and people on both sides suffer \u2014 although it\u2019s usually the poorer folks who struggle the most.<\/p>\n

The year is 1975. The setting is a vaguely futuristic skyscraper in which the fancy families spend their days among the upper-tier penthouses while the \u201clower class\u201d families live in the greasy, grungy lower sections. Our entry point is an amiable new \u201cmiddle class\u201d tenant: Robert Laing is a doctor, which means he should fit in quite well with the upper crust of his newfound vertical community \u2014 but he also seems to detest the arrogance and artifice that so many rich folks thrive on, which means he\u2019ll probably get along better with the low-income tenants. Laing is an anomaly of sorts, and his arrival at the allegedly self-sustaining high rise community kick-starts a chain reaction of wildly self-destructive events. (And you\u2019ve probably never seen destruction of this sort set to piano covers of old Abba songs.)<\/p>\n

The massive apartment building becomes a relative war zone before too long, and Laing finds himself torn between the powerful but soulless lawmakers and the earnest yet volatile rule-breakers. Cocktail parties devolve into raiding parties. Arguments over a swimming pool lead to shocking violence. The lower floors become trash-choked caverns; the upper levels become miniature fiefdoms governed by egocentric windbags. Subtext-wise, none of this stuff is all that subtle, but then again neither is Ballard\u2019s source material. It\u2019s sort of like Animal Farm<\/em> meets Lord of the Flies<\/em>, if you want to get literary about it, and director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump do a remarkable job of bringing a fascinating, difficult novel to the big screen.<\/p>\n

High-Rise<\/em> starts out in traditional fashion \u2014 our protagonist enters into a rapidly devolving situation \u2014 but gradually picks up speed, trims a lot of the book\u2019s more redundant moments, and settles into sort of an avant-garde nightmare. The characters go from relatively civilized to powerfully manic in rather short order, and the filmmakers celebrate the dry absurdity of the novel with a fluid, fever-dream visual presentation that forces a viewer to keep up and pay close attention. An intelligent novel deserves an equally intelligent adaptation, and that\u2019s precisely what Mr. Wheatley and Ms. Jump (not to mention the fantastic cinematographer Laurie Rose) have delivered.<\/p>\n

Tom Hiddleston is pitch-perfect as the newcomer; at first Laing, with his classy demeanor and well-tailored suits, seems to be a perfect fit for the upper-crust crowd \u2014 but he also exhibits a sort of low-key class and decency that serves him well among the \u201cnormal\u201d tenants. There are great performances on both sides of the sky-high class struggle: Luke Evans as a documentary filmmaker who inspires all sorts of animosity among the upper crust; Elisabeth Moss as a (very) pregnant working class woman who has eyes for Dr. Laing; Jeremy Irons as the architect (and virtual overlord) of the community. There\u2019s not a weak link to be found here: Sienna Miller, Reece Shearsmith, Sienna Guillory, and James Purefoy provide equally strong support as High-Rise picks up steam on its ascent into chaos.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if Wheatley and his collaborators realized early on that \u201cyet another story about the rich vs. the poor\u201d wouldn\u2019t be all that unique a story to tell, and so they messed with the typical three-act structure, made sure to accentuate the novel\u2019s bleak, bold sense of humor, and dabbled with a vaguely post-apocalyptic (yet firmly 1970s) setting. It\u2019s easy to see what a simple adaptation of High-Rise<\/em> would look like (it\u2019d probably be a lot like Die Hard<\/em>, actually) but we should never expect \u201csimple\u201d from the team that made Down Terrace<\/em>, Kill List<\/em>, and A Field in England<\/em>. High-Rise<\/em> is a weird, confrontational, and darkly fascinating novel, and this long-awaited movie version is all of those things, and more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Weinberg \/ Nerdist The haves and the have-nots generally don\u2019t live in the same neighborhoods, for obvious reasons, and the fascinating new thriller High-Rise offers a stark, extreme, and satirical explanation as to why this is the case. Based on the 1975 J.G. Ballard novel of the same name,\u00a0Ben Wheatley\u2018s odd and challenging High-Rise … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFANTASTIC FEST REVIEW: HIGH-RISE - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2015\/09\/29\/fantastic-fest-review-high-rise\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"FANTASTIC FEST REVIEW: HIGH-RISE - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scott Weinberg \/ Nerdist The haves and the have-nots generally don\u2019t live in the same neighborhoods, for obvious reasons, and the fascinating new thriller High-Rise offers a stark, extreme, and satirical explanation as to why this is the case. 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