Not unlike the films of Nicolas Winding Refn, High-Rise relies heavily on style to reach its audience. Where I might have expected the fairly plot-driven concept to translate into heightened speeches and not-so-abstract abstractions, I instead found myself totally absorbed in the vibrant images, the haunting production design of the titular complex, and its similarly complex tenants. There is nothing so delicious as a film that provokes us and overwhelms us and then leaves us desperate to catch up. Too many pictures take our hand, guiding us through the characters, the plot, the themes, and then let us out the other side after a couple hours of escape. Not so here.
Director Ben Wheatley transports us to a dystopian tower outside London where a famed architect (Jeremy Irons) has fashioned a chic abode for the accomplished and bourgeois. We follow a young doctor (Tom Hiddleston) into this tower, which we quickly see is a world unto itself, containing everything from gymnasiums and pools to restaurants and grocery stores. Trapped as we become in this paradoxically claustrophobic high-rise, we see the drama unfold between the social strata: the wealthy and influential live in the upper floors of the forty available, while lower-class families abide beneath. As the infrastructure periodically fails -- including power outages and garbage chute blockages that particularly infuriate the tenants of lower floors -- the various strata descend into violence and madness, warring against the other floors (and social classes).
Wheatley eyes the proceedings with a wicked sense of glee, allowing the horrors and the humors to coalesce into the blackest of comedies and the most stylized of thrillers. His film utilizes fluid cinematography and somewhat disconnected editing to enhance first the dreamlike quality of the apartments and secondly the dizzying madness brought on by their failure. The gorgeous costumes devolve into animalistic and bloodied scraps. The beauty and grandeur are wasted by vandals and thieves, the luxury is ignored in favor of debauchery and orgiastic hedonism. His team of designers have meticulously brought this 1970s world to life, and to then see it all destroy itself before our eyes is nothing short of astonishing. And, of course, there's the scene where James Purefoy dances with the camera.
For all its grim imagery and timely critique of our socioeconomic culture, High-Rise keeps things energetic, lively, and often very funny. It's a surreal adventure into a bizarre world of themes and images and people that is perhaps more complex than necessary, more specific than is comfortable, and more important than we expect.
IMDb: High-Rise
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