High-Rise (2015)
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.
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33 films that influenced High-Rise
What critics say influenced High-Rise
Rapturous and surreal are scenes like an inky invasion of the swimming pool and a slo-mo party brawl, which play like mind-spinning trips out of A Clockwork Orange or Under The Skin.
The Seventies was a golden age for British pulp fiction (Wheatley would also have the nerve for James Herbert’s The Rats), with “the old ultra-violence” of Kubrick ’s A Clockwork Orange, like Ballard , part of a climate of gleeful, often grubby extremity.
The American poster even dares make a cocky nod to the key art for Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange.”
It’s all there on screen, stranded halfway between “ Dredd ” with all the action cut out and “A Clockwork Orange” without the incisively dark sense of humor.
There are inevitable echoes of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange here, plus overt nods to more obscure British cult movies including Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment.
Jump and Wheatley chose to locate the action of "High-Rise" in 1975, so their film is a retro-futurist nightmare, full of massive sideburns and shirt collars, as well as orgies and ennui freely inspired by the works of Lindsay Anderson ("O Lucky Man!"), Stanley Kubrick ("A Clockwork Orange") and Nicolas Roeg ("The Man Who Fell to Earth").
Producer Jeremy Thomas did Crash, another Ballard adaptation.
Ballard's writing is strong stuff and can result in potent movies (like Spielberg's Empire of the Sun or Cronenberg's Crash), but Wheatley seems to have become lost in this High-Rise.
A notorious triptych of novels from the ’70s already yielded one controversial, if dry, screen outing in 1996 with David Cronenberg’s Crash.
Ballard’s books — including his notorious exercise in vehicular erotica, “Crash,” another unfilmable story that was filmed rather well — were unusually attentive to the physical and psychological effects of a character’s environment, and Wheatley’s film similarly encourages a systemic, kaleidoscopic view of the action.
“Don’t Look Now” director Nicolas Roeg nearly made it his follow-up to David Bowie vehicle “The Man Who Fell To Earth; “Sexy Beast” producer Jeremy Thomas struggled to get it made ever after.
Jump and Wheatley chose to locate the action of "High-Rise" in 1975, so their film is a retro-futurist nightmare, full of massive sideburns and shirt collars, as well as orgies and ennui freely inspired by the works of Lindsay Anderson ("O Lucky Man!"), Stanley Kubrick ("A Clockwork Orange") and Nicolas Roeg ("The Man Who Fell to Earth").
The central character of both book and film is Dr Robert Laing, an obvious reference to RD Laing, the radical psychiatrist whose 1967 book, The Politics of Experience, ruffled quite a few feathers at the time and who, incidentally, inspired Ken Loachs superb film Family Life (1972).
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Jump and Wheatley chose to locate the action of "High-Rise" in 1975, so their film is a retro-futurist nightmare, full of massive sideburns and shirt collars, as well as orgies and ennui freely inspired by the works of Lindsay Anderson ("O Lucky Man!"), Stanley Kubrick ("A Clockwork Orange") and Nicolas Roeg ("The Man Who Fell to Earth").
The Brutalist architecture and cold sterility of the building suggests Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, and the polished futurism and stiffly remote characters are reminiscent of François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451.
The Brutalist architecture and cold sterility of the building suggests Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, and the polished futurism and stiffly remote characters are reminiscent of François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451.
While the party scenes have elements of Studio 54, the fight scenes are more reminiscent of something from William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
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But the high-rise-as-allegory bit has been done in David Cronenberg’s Shivers and George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead.
Cronenberg found very real and contemporary Ballardian landscapes in his native Canada—not only the view of the traffic-choked 401-404 interchange in Crash but also the “Starliner Towers” on Nun’s Island near Montreal which feature in his apartment-tower-gone-mad classic Shivers, released the same year that Ballard’s High-Rise appeared.
This is part a funnier cousin to David Cronenberg’s sex zombies great “Shivers,” part the darkest British comedy imaginable.
As other critics have observed, Cronenberg’s early horror film “Shivers” (released in the United States as “They Came From Within”), about the spread of a sexual parasite through a Toronto housing project, feels like an unofficial adaptation of “High-Rise.”
High-Rise recalls the simplistic social symbolism of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer—it’s Class Warfare 101.
It’s like Snowpiercer (real estate stands in for a post apocalyptic train), with Jeremy Irons’ all-powerful Mr.
Lo mejor está todavía por venir pues los personajes de Jump/Wheatley/Ballard son bizarros por ser familiares, desde el arquitecto hasta la estrella pop, desde el ama de casa oprimida hasta el exitoso hombre que nos guía por este laberinto de elevadores que multiplican rostros que se parecen siempre a los de alguien más -y piensen aquí en la frivolidad turbia de American Psycho (EUA, 2000)- y son ellos quienes a pesar de la debacle anunciada (Snowpiercer se asoma más de una vez, aunque sin la potencia estética de Wheatley) deciden quedarse en el edificio, en el sistema y reproducirlo aunque nada pueda soportarlo.
It’s simplistic to label “High-Rise,” Ben Wheatley’s retro-futuristic tale of class warfare, a vertical “Snowpiercer.”
Watching High-Rise, I was reminded of the many other, better films that have tackled class anxiety in a similar setting: George Romero’s Land of the Dead , Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie , Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer and (at the top of this particular class) Fritz Lang’s Metropolis .
Hace un par de años, el público fue sorprendido por la adaptación a cines del cómic Le Transperceneige que, en las manos de Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Mother) se convirtió en la alegórica El Expreso del Miedo (Snowpiercer).