High-Rise (Cinema Review)

Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Elizabeth Moss, Keeley Hawes, Reece Shearsmith, Luke Evans
Directed by: Ben Wheatley
Running time: 119 mins
BBFC Certificate: 15
Release Date: March 18th 2016 (UK)

When JG Ballard’s novel came out in 1975 it was seen as a savage, and timely, reminder of the failures of modernism. In the 1970s – ask your dad – Britain was indeed a grey, litter-strewn mess of a place, with constant power cuts, a poor standard of living and a housing shortage. The glorious future that was promised by modernist architects, of high-rise apartment blocks with heating, hot water and – joy of joys – indoor toilets (believe it or not readers, I had an outside toilet up until 1982) – had gone horribly wrong. Within a few short years new post-war housing was graffiti-strewn, broken, leaking and in some cases completely abandoned – and it was all the architects’ fault.

The trouble with the film of Ballard’s book – well, the main problem – is its timing. In 1975 tower blocks were indeed misfunctioning nightmares, the lifts broke down, the windows didn’t fit, the flat rooves leaked. Modernism had failed. Now though, technology has caught up, and the basics of Modernism – fresh air, light, space, good lighting – have been proved right. Windows are triple-glazed, rooves don’t leak, floors are scrubbed, bathrooms are white. We’re all modernists now.

Which brings us to the film. As soon as Tom Hiddlestone’s doctor moves into his all mod cons flat in a grey high-rise you just know it’s all going to go wrong. His neighbour, Sienna Miller, is a fragile, boozy, fag-smoking wreck, who has something going on with a documentary film-maker, played by Evans. Metaphor alert – they are in the middle of the block, with the people in the lower floors struggling to pay the rent, and at the top the elite are luxuriating in decadent parties with drugs, booze, punch-ups, weird sex and weirder dancing. His job, cutting into human brains to analyse them, isn’t going well either.

Which direction is our Tom going to go in, up or down? To no-one’s great surprise it’s not long before the block goes wrong, the lifts jam, the power cuts out, the swimming pool is full of dead dogs, the supermarket runs out of food and – metaphor alert 2 – the fruit goes rotten. It soon descends into full-blown anarchy, and long, increasingly tedious montages of violence. Director Ben Wheatley’s long-time collaborator, Reese Shearsmith, looks like he’s been helicoptered in to bring a bit of gothic humour to the whole thing, but even he drowns in a sea of clichés.

Just in case we haven’t got the message here – duh – Hiddleston gets invited up to the top floor, where resides the architect of the whole wretched project (Jeremy Irons). He wears white, challenges Hiddleston to a game of squash even though he can barely walk, has a horse-riding wife (Keeley Hawes), a huge rooftop garden and is quite, quite mad. Even he doesn’t seem surprised when the natives start revolting, and tells a copper who knocks on the door “Everything’s fine, officer”. Hmm.

The effect of watching orgy after fight after party for two long hours is merely numbing, rather than the intense satire it’s presumably supposed to be. And if this is Hiddleston’s showreel for James Bond, God help us all ad he comes across as a skinny cipher, a drippy posh boy who watches the whole thing with disinterest that borders on boredom. I don’t blame him for that.

Overall verdict: The design and period detail are spot on – all those fags, all those sideburns – but really this belongs in a museum. It’s a strangely misplaced and mistimed look at the failure of modern architecture. Only Elizabeth Moss’s sympathetic mum reminds us all that there are people at stake here, and they have been poorly catered for.

Reviewer: Mike Martin