VANCOUVER \u2014 There is a certain shuddering fear within Western civilization about being left to our own devices without the comforts of modern life. A friend remarked over a mimosa brunch recently a quandary about what has happened that led us from the hunter\/gatherer instinct to an idea like brunch; what occurred to change us from tribal survivors to status animals with an egg white frittata on the end of our fork? And how thin is the line between the two?<\/p>\n
When J.G. Ballard wrote High Rise<\/em>, his 1975 dystopic nightmare play on the \u201ctwo dressed up as a ten\u201d aristocracy of the modern yuppie, he unfolded an existence that seemed so nightmarish in its detached empathy and visible viscera that no one could imagine it as predictive fiction. Now, however, in the age of \u201calways a better iPhone,\u201d where people define themselves by what section of Gastown they live in, this story of a luxury high rise devolving into violent pack mentality and opulent gluttony all at once has become less of a science fiction escape and more of a very legitimate cautionary tale.<\/p>\n Director Ben Wheatley, the man behind the equally brutal study of the human love of downward spiraling chaos Sightseers,<\/em> saw beauty in Ballard\u2019s prognostication and aggressive poetics therein and figured it was high time this mirror was turned on a modern audience.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just straightforward, you know. He\u2019s not afraid of blatant massive metaphor, like the rich at the top and the not so rich at the bottom. I like that, it\u2019s straight ahead. He has that thing that Kubrick has as well where there\u2019s a b-movie narrative that sits on top of something that\u2019s much more complex underneath,\u201d says Wheatley.<\/p>\n The b-movie narrative comes in the form of an almost comically emotionless cast of affected apartment dwellers, all swaggering in and out of the titular tower with an accomplished sense of existential entitlement. They compete for the elevator, they compete for apartments on the right floor, they compete for parking spots, they compete for the right to use the pool; life in the high rise is a pressure cooker of a self-made society of status. Like what would happen if Lord of the Flies<\/em> had taken place with the characters from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.<\/em><\/p>\n What bubbles underneath this narrative is the very real and almost insatiable desire humans have for keeping up with the Joneses. The building often faces infrastructure woes, but the bored and classist souls within it, enjoying their oasis from \u201cwhat\u2019s going on at street level,\u201d put up with it just to live in an environment described by one character as \u201cprone to fits of mania, narcissism, and power outages.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to make a movie that was sexy and was glamourous and was violent. Rather than making something that was just a drudge,\u201d says Wheatley. \u201cYou needed to have that journey of what the potential of the building was versus the total collapse of it. The audience needs to enjoy it and it needs to emerge as somewhere they would essentially want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n This is where the film becomes uncomfortable. The violence is jarring and somewhat frequent; the decline of the social constructs within the building is not only aggressive but also wholly embraced. You are strapped to a seat, watching a group of truly ruthless individuals let death and consequence roll off their back like a broken string of pearls. And there is part of you, even a small part, that finds the detachment a little cathartic. Or as Jeremy Irons\u2019 character, penthouse resident Anthony Royal, remarks: \u201cWhy delve?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAn essential tenant of the book is the perversity of the characters and that they enjoy the anarchy and they want to stay for the anarchy,\u201d remarks Wheatley. \u201cIt\u2019s something that is kind of counter-intuitive for a modern audience because logic is they would escape, but they actually end up joining together in their love of the destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think that is a misconception about the book that they are trapped there. They\u2019re not. It\u2019s a freedom it gives them but it\u2019s a brutal freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n As the movie moves to its beautifully filmed, intoxicatingly sound edited, decaying nightmare of a conclusion, after pulling you through a denouement of feral righteousness that feels more like a ballet than an ordeal, you see why there are people who would witness the thrusting carnage of that kind of downfall and still think it looks exciting. And that is why history will always repeat itself, whether it is the fall of Rome or the decline of a luxury high rise into tribal warfare.<\/p>\n When Tom Hiddleston\u2019s character Dr. Robert Laing attends his first party as an approved resident, he cites his desire to \u201cget everything right,\u201d and it is this that intoxicates him to the climb.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a social contract. He thinks if he does things right, then he\u2019ll be rewarded and move up through the system, but then the system changes around him,\u201d says Wheatley.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s kind of how we all act, like we need permission to do stuff, and you don\u2019t really need permission to do anything. But it suits the society to keep your ambitions battened down so you don\u2019t think outside of what you are doing; because if you did for a minute, so many things wouldn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you get to that stage where none of it matters and it doesn\u2019t matter anymore, then you\u2019ve totally eroded the social contract so why does anybody do what they\u2019re told anymore?\u201d<\/p>\n