Montecristo Magazine \/ Jim Tobler<\/p>\n
Film director Ben Wheatley is comfortably seated on a couch in the lobby of the Vancity Theatre. He is at the end of a small series of interviews as he tours the world in support of his latest and first big-budget feature, High-Rise<\/em>. A big budget these days means a certain amount of production luxuries, but of course, it also means the cast can be A-list\u2014something Wheatley greatly appreciated at every step in the filming process. \u201cIt was amazing thing, just to look at the daily rushes,\u201d he says. \u201cAlmost every second of it was fantastic. The actors really gave it their best.\u201d Those actors include Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Luke Evans, and Elizabeth Moss.<\/p>\n The film is based on a J.G. Ballard novel, and embraces the dystopian vision that author is so well known for. In Hiddleston, Wheatley has an actor who, at the centre of the action, has at first studied, and then pathologically enforced, distance from the often bizarre politically and sexually fraught environment he finds himself in. Says Wheatley, referencing screenwriter Amy Jump, with whom he has worked in the past, \u201cthe script has its own logic. I didn\u2019t get involved. We don\u2019t do battling interpretations at all. What I did was create a kind of visual ecosystem, trying to find a new way of telling the story. I see it in my head, and then try to make it happen.\u201d Hiddleston\u2019s character is a neurologist who has just moved in to a high-rise apartment building. The tower has its architect ensconced in the penthouse, and there is a clear demarcation between the upper-floor and lower-floor residents, all based on social and economic lines. Tensions build between the two classes, and what can loosely be called normal\u00a0and socially acceptable behaviours devolve into a rough and tumble, libidinous, and increasingly violent set of confrontations, ultimately ending in something approaching apocalypse.<\/p>\n The film is redolent of august influences, such as Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam, but really establishes its own inexorable pace and a kind of random-feeling structure that in fact is unspooling towards a highly particularized inevitable result. With the violence, narrative leaps of logic, and fairly explicit sexuality, this film is not going to be everyone\u2019s cup of tea, but as Wheatley says, \u201cI had read the book, and knew it would not be an easy story to tell. Perhaps that is why it was in development for years before we took it on.\u201d<\/p>\n The performances are uniformly exceptional. \u201cBad acting is usually delivering bad lines,\u201d Wheatley declares. \u201cAmy\u2019s script didn\u2019t have any bad lines, so that opened us up to great possibilities. In many scenes, it became a bit collaborative, a bit of a negotiation: Tom or Sienna might offer some insight, or ask a crucial question, and we would explore, usually with fantastic results.\u201d High-Rise<\/em> has played to great acclaim all over the world, and opens in Vancouver on May 20. While it cannot fairly be called a completely mainstream film, it offers challenges, asks tough questions, and suggests salvation is a multi-faceted thing, not a simple epiphany in the dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"