{"id":2782,"date":"2016-05-20T21:52:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T21:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/ben-wheatleys-high-rise-channels-strange-taboo-breaking-films-of-the-1970s\/"},"modified":"2016-05-20T21:52:40","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T21:52:40","slug":"ben-wheatleys-high-rise-channels-strange-taboo-breaking-films-of-the-1970s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/ben-wheatleys-high-rise-channels-strange-taboo-breaking-films-of-the-1970s\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise channels strange, taboo-breaking films of the 1970s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Crouse \/ Metro<\/em><\/p>\n

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How to describe High-Rise, the darkly funny film from director Ben Wheatley?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Here goes; imagine the love child of Lord of the Flies and The Towering Inferno. An adaptation of J.G. Ballard\u2019s novel about class segregation in a luxury condo, High-Rise is chaotic and completely bonkers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s material in here that is difficult and there\u2019s structure in here that\u2019s difficult but there\u2019s also fun,\u201d says Wheatley.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s anarchy and sex and dancing and music. I always like to think about it like those 40s and 50s Hollywood movies and what they used to look like. There\u2019d be no contradiction in a cowboy movie stopping for someone to sing a song.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou don\u2019t think about the pacing being really odd. The idea behind it was that those films were broken up into chunks. There\u2019s a variety to them that make them really enjoyable. That\u2019s what I was hoping for with this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wheatley says the story of social warfare in the closed environment of an apartment building is just as relevant now as it was when Ballard wrote it in 1975.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBallard used to describe it that he was standing by the side of the road waving that there is danger ahead. But when I reread it when I was 40, it\u2019s like, Crap, it\u2019s not a warning anymore. It\u2019s like it was taken from the newspaper. This is actually happening, which is kind of shocking but also kind of interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Known for his uncompromising films like Kill List and Sightseers, movies that critic Sheila O\u2019Malley described as \u201cblack comedy thrillers involving crime, murder\u201d and notable for their \u201cabsence of a moral compass,\u201d the 44-year-old director is the cinematic spawn of mavericks like Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell and John Boorman, British filmmakers who broke taboos in big budget movies like Don\u2019t Look Now, The Devils and Deliverance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat was the mainstream,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you dig into the BFI archive and look at the Jack Bond stuff and see the other end of the avant guard cinema that was being made at the same time, it was absolutely crazy. It\u2019s a real shame that has been lost. What also makes me chuckle is you see reviews saying that High-Rise is insane or incredibly experimental and you think, \u2018This film wouldn\u2019t have stood out as all that strange in the \u201970s.\u2019 It would have been a more conservative film of that period.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Today it\u2019s a little tougher to raise money to get challenging films like High-Rise made. He says Hollywood-y or famous actors help, and to that end he signed Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Mad Men\u2019s Elisabeth Moss to tell his outlandish tale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI like what (producer) Jeremy Thomas says about it. His whole career has been about smuggling weird into the mainstream and I think that\u2019s about right. It\u2019s a deal between you and the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Part of that audience is Ballard\u2019s considerable fan base.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe Ballardian website have interviewed us a few times and they seem to be convinced that we haven\u2019t totally pissed up the leg of the memory of J.G. Ballard. There was never any intention to rile those people. They are partly the reason we are able to do the film, they are the fan base. Why would you go out of your way to irritate people like that?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Crouse \/ Metro How to describe High-Rise, the darkly funny film from director Ben Wheatley? Here goes; imagine the love child of Lord of the Flies and The Towering Inferno. An adaptation of J.G. Ballard\u2019s novel about class segregation in a luxury condo, High-Rise is chaotic and completely bonkers. \u201cThere\u2019s material in here 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":"\nBen Wheatley's High-Rise channels strange, taboo-breaking films of the 1970s - 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\/ben-wheatleys-high-rise-channels-strange-taboo-breaking-films-of-the-1970s\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ben Wheatley's High-Rise channels strange, taboo-breaking films of the 1970s - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Crouse \/ Metro How to describe High-Rise, the darkly funny film from director Ben Wheatley? 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