{"id":2779,"date":"2016-05-20T20:41:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T20:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/in-high-rise-ben-wheatley-mines-the-surreal-and-the-subversive\/"},"modified":"2016-05-20T20:41:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T20:41:06","slug":"in-high-rise-ben-wheatley-mines-the-surreal-and-the-subversive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/in-high-rise-ben-wheatley-mines-the-surreal-and-the-subversive\/","title":{"rendered":"In High-Rise, Ben Wheatley mines the surreal and the subversive"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Semley \/ The Globe and Mail<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLater, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.\u201d<\/p>\n

So begins High-Rise<\/em>, English novelist J.G. Ballard\u2019s 1975 novel about an ultra-modern, super-luxe apartment complex that turns into a Lord of the Flies-<\/em>style tribal war zone.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s first line is often cited, and with good reason: It plainly captures the coalescing of the surreal, the grotesque and the matter-of-fact that can be described as \u201cBallardian.\u201d It\u2019s the sort of sardonic, dystopian fiction that tends to take hold in the minds of burgeoning weirdos. Such was the case with British filmmaker Ben Wheatley, who has recently adapted Ballard\u2019s novel as a major-ish motion picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m gonna sound like a pensioner,\u201d Wheatley says, in an interview conducted just after High-Rise<\/em>\u2019s premiere at last September\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival, \u201cbut back in the day, it was hard to research things. You couldn\u2019t just go to Wikipedia. You held onto those bits, the books you hear people talking about in hushed tones. That was my kind of education in the counterculture: entry-level drugs into a much wider world of weirdness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wheatley has made a low-key career mining this world of weirdness \u2013 and indulging his own stylistic peculiarities. His films\u2019 moods, and sometimes their genres, morph almost imperceptibly. His auspicious 2009 debut, the kitchen-sink crime thriller Down Terrace<\/em>, unfolds in a manner so humdrum that it\u2019s difficult to even recognize it as a Mob movie. His follow-up, 2011\u2019sKill List<\/em>, similarly eschews clich\u00e9, shifting from domestic drama to hit-man flick to pagan horror movie while sustaining a suffocating tension throughout. In the horror-comedy Sightseers<\/em> (2012), a boring camping holiday in the English countryside left-turns into a lovers-on-the-run bloodbath. And the English Civil War-set A Field in England<\/em>, from 2013, shoots the starch of British history through with psychedelic hues, an examination of power and madness that\u2019s equal parts Werner Herzog\u2019sAguirre: The Wrath of God<\/em> and Bob Rafelson\u2019s Head<\/em>. Ben Wheatley is, to risk understating it, an interesting filmmaker.<\/p>\n

And High-Rise \u2013<\/em> an adaptation of a beloved cult novel starring smirking Marvel Studios villain Tom Hiddleston as the dog-munching Dr. Laing \u2013 marks a step closer toward the mainstream for a filmmaker who has long obeyed his artier tendencies, as if beholden to the sinister whispers of some demonic muse.<\/p>\n

Instead of lapsing into visual and stylistic clich\u00e9 for his ostensible \u201cbreakout,\u201d Wheatley\u2019s High-Rise<\/em> strikes a balance between the Ballardian and the, let\u2019s call it, Wheatley-esque.<\/p>\n

\u201cI make the films I make despite myself,\u201d Wheatley explains. \u201cI\u2019ve come to terms with that over the years. I don\u2019t really have any say in it.\u201d Of course, what Wheatley really means is that he has all<\/em> the say. His films are every inch the work of a singular stylistic bent. He edits his own films, developing their hypnotic rhythms, and works closely alongside wife, screenwriter and creative partner Amy Jump.<\/p>\n

Wheatley\u2019s style \u2013 the jumpy editing patterns, the mood of dreamlike alienation, the development of protagonists who seem to float through their own stories \u2013 perfectly suits High-Rise<\/em>\u2019s themes of revolution and class antagonism. And while High-Rise<\/em> unfolds in a retro-futuristic 1970s, its depiction of a crumbling middle class reflects certain present-day realities. \u201cIt\u2019s the degrading of the teacher and the engineer and all these people who sat in the middle,\u201d he says. \u201cThey had a skill, and you had to respect that. And now nobody cares.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike other recent films that voguishly tap into the struggle between have and have-not (Joon-ho Bong\u2019s runaway-train class-war showpieceSnowpiercer<\/em> comes to mind), and unlike a lot of actual historical revolutions, there\u2019s no real \u201cflashpoint\u201d for the social upheaval in High-Rise<\/em>. That is: There\u2019s no single moment that seems to catalyze the lingering revolutionary energy; no Boston Tea Party or storming of the Bastille. Instead, the skirmish between the working- and middle-class lower floors and the upper-crust penthouse-dwellers unfolds as if it were somehow predestined. Garbage piles up, alliances form, the tenants turn to fits of orgiastic violence, and just straight-up orgies.<\/p>\n

When the building\u2019s architect \u2013 the scheming, seemingly omniscient Royal, played with sallow perfection by Jeremy Irons \u2013 says that he designed the apartment tower as a \u201ccrucible for change,\u201d he seems to be acknowledging that it was conceived of as a social experiment. It\u2019s an abject illustration of that line from Marx that the \u201cold collapsing bourgeois society\u201d is pregnant with the social order that will topple it. It\u2019s less about devolving into a state of barbarism than revealing the depravity and violence inherent in the class system, where a man can dine on a dog as if it\u2019s the most natural thing the world.<\/p>\n

As to the prospect of a real-world revolution, one that may mend social divisions of class and capital, Wheatley sees it unfolding at the same alienated, measured deliberateness he depicts in High-Rise<\/em>. It\u2019s not a possibility, but a probability. \u201cIt\u2019s not imminent,\u201d says the director. \u201cIt\u2019s happening right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Semley \/ The Globe and Mail \u201cLater, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.\u201d So begins High-Rise, English novelist J.G. Ballard\u2019s 1975 novel about an ultra-modern, super-luxe apartment complex that … 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":"\nIn High-Rise, Ben Wheatley mines the surreal and the subversive - 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\/2016\/05\/20\/in-high-rise-ben-wheatley-mines-the-surreal-and-the-subversive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In High-Rise, Ben Wheatley mines the surreal and the subversive - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Semley \/ The Globe and Mail \u201cLater, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.\u201d So begins High-Rise, English novelist J.G. 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