HIGH RISE : Friday 26th August 2016.

'HIGH RISE' which has had a limited release in Australia, I saw late last week and is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by J.G.Ballard. This Sci-Fi dystopian drama film is Directed by Ben Wheatley and is set in the time that the source novel was written. Produced by Jeremy Thomas of the Recorded Picture Company, who had wanted to turn this into a film since the '70's, and finally found a Director to do so in Wheatley, when the latter started looking at who held the film rights to the book back in early 2013. The film premiered at TIFF in September last year, opened in London in mid-March and arrived on Australian shores earlier this month having premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in June. For many years the book was said to be unfilmable, but then that was said too of Ballard's 1973 novel 'Crash' which was successfully made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996 featuring James Spader and Holly Hunter. I guess you'll have to decide, but so far critics have been polarised by this one, and it's taken just US$4M.

As the film opens we are greeted by Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) in what seems to be his trashed apartment. He sits on the balcony looking the worse for wear with a white Husky dog, petting it, before killing it (off camera) and spit roasting it (in camera). We then go back three months in time and recount the steps to what led him to this day and this circumstance. Three months ago successful consulting neurologist Dr. Laing moves into the High Rise apartment block - a forty storey tower block on the edge of London that represents the epitome of modern living during the 70's. It is one of five, and the first to be commissioned.

On the upper floors live societies rich and elite, while on the lower levels reside more common middle classes. The upper levels offer its residents a gym, swimming pool, spa, supermarket, sculptured roof top gardens and a primary school giving residents no reason to leave other than for work. The apartments are fitted with the latest in design and modern conveniences. Laing has moved into an apartment on the 25th floor - he is alone. On the first day, Laing falls asleep on a recliner on his balcony in the sunshine, only to be looked down upon by a single mother neighbour living directly above him on the 26th floor, Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller) who takes an instant attraction to the new kid on the block.

Sniffing around Melville like a dog on heat is Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) a documentarian film maker who lives on a lower level with his heavily pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss) and children. Laing gets to know Wilder and the two soon become friends as well. Wilder has a huge chip on his shoulder and begrudges those living on the upper levels, while he resides on the lower levels in a state of near chaos with a wife he can take or leave and a bunch of kids that he seems to tolerate. He is very much the dominant male and ready to pick a fight with anyone it seems.

Within a few days of taking up residence, Laing is summonsed to the upper penthouse level where lives the architect of the high rise development - acclaimed Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) with his wife Ann (Keeley Hawes). After an exchange of social niceties and an overview of Royal's philosophy behind his design for his iconic development, Laing is invited to an 18th Century costume party to be held on the rooftop in a few days time - a perfect excuse to meet his fellow neighbours.

In the meantime, working at a school of physiology Laing is cracking open a human skull in front of three students looking on. One student, Munrow (Augustus Prew) collapses when Laing peels back the facial mask and takes a saw to the skull. Fearful that Munrow may have sustained some head injury during his fall, Laing orders a brain scan as a precautionary measure. When the day of the costume party arrives, Laing attends but wearing business suit and tie and instantly is out of place with those others dressed a la 18th Century aristocracy. Laing discovers Munrow is in attendance and is in fact a resident of the high rise too, but is derided by Ann and other guests, including Munrow, and is promptly thrown out of the party for being non-conformist. Laing is shown to the elevator, and promptly gets trapped for several hours due to a power failure.

At a game of squash the next day between Laing and Royal, the architect simply dismisses the outage as the building settles, together with the water supply being shut off and garbage chutes becoming blocked . . . although such occurrences are becoming more frequent! A few days later, Laing meets with Munrow to give him the results of the brain scan, which have come back clear, but Laing tells him differently saying that they 'found something' in retaliation for being humiliated at the earlier party. Munrow is distraught by this news, and the next evening during another power failure which sees decadent drunken debauchery partying in the hallways and apartments, Munrow hurls himself off a balcony 39 storeys up, landing head first on the bonnet of a car below.

Wilder the next day finds it disturbing that the police never called to investigate the death of Munrow, and sets about making a documentary to expose the injustices of the high rise system, and how life within it has deteriorated so rapidly. Law and order within the building start to crumble at an alarming rate, as infrastructure begins to fail with ever increasing frequency and for prolonged periods of time. Tension between upper and lower levels begins to rise.

Violence and brutality are the new norm, the supermarket is ransacked down to the bare shelves, food becomes more scarce and sought after by the day and a class war fare breaks out between floors. Some residents try to barricade themselves into their apartments, while others go on the prowl robbing and killing anyone who gets in their way. Society soon breaks down within the high rise and it becomes survival of the fittest. Laing shows signs of remorse over the death of Munrow, and begins to become unhinged himself amidst all the carnage and chaos going on around him, to the point where he pummels someones face in over the last can of grey paint in the supermarket so that he can redecorate his apartment.

Wilder meanwhile is intent on getting to Royal and he sees the high rise designer as the architect of the chaos and break down of civilisation within it. Some of the upper floor residents including Royal see Wilder as a threat and try to coerce Laing into lobotomising him. Laing conducts a basic psychiatric test on Wilder and surmises that he is in reality probably the sanest man in the building and refuses. Wilder makes it to the penthouse level and in a scuffle shoots Royal dead. Wilder in turn is stabbed to death by Ann and a collective of upper level wives who have got together to establish a new world order within the high rise. This brings us back to that opening scene where a sense of calm is now descending on the high rise as power is restored and the violence has subsided. Helen gives birth to her child, and Laing and Charlotte lie in bed debating that what has happened within their high rise will undoubtedly occur in the second tower.

I can see why this film has divided critics. It is not an easy watch and won't be for everyone. Wheatley captures the tone of the '70's perfectly with its zeitgeist and pre-Thatcher era, and Hiddleston and Evans in particular seem to lavish in their unhinged, debauched and destructive roles as the previously pristine building and everything it stood for descends into a cluttered, grubby, bloody and lawless wasteland. This is not a happy film and it does not have an upbeat or optimistic ending either, but it is well delivered as a film set in the past and about a possible future seen when that future is now a reality and its past predictions are upon us.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-