Ben Wheatley
High-Rise

WHAT EXPECTATIONS. I believe it is somehow difficult to try to describe and at the same time judge something that is considered to be one of your favorite works (in this case) literary. I mean, in any case, one of those works whose significance transcends the content itself, becoming something that is a part of you. Because it has become an integral part of your thinking.

This process is all the more difficult if, as in this case, the object of the analysis is actually a cinematic adaptation of the work itself.

This is because there is generally the belief, that conviction according to which cinematic works drawn from a literary work are practically never up to the original. A stance towards which I prefer to take an intermediate position and greater balance, possibly considering the two things separately. And so I did in the case of 'High-Rise', the film directed by Ben Wheatley and in practice an adaptation of the novel of the same name written by James Graham Ballard, one of the most brilliant writers of his generation and not only relatively in the science fiction genre, and published in 1976.

On the contrary, I must say that I was very confident in the good outcome of this operation, I have always considered the work as adaptable to the big screen and now that I have finally seen this film, I can say I wasn't disappointed. The film, in its settings and recreated situations, the characterizations of the characters, even and especially the choice of colors, works by picking up in large part, as is evident, the plot and the atmosphere of the book, adding some new or simply different content given the possibilities provided by the cinematographic medium.

THE FILM. I had researched beforehand about the director and the cast. But let's start with the director, Ben Wheatley. Born in 1972, British, I believe he is one of the lesser-known young directors outside the UK, and this is unfair. I can say I have already seen several of his films and have always been pleasantly impressed, both for the quality of the direction and the smoothness of the plots. A director specialized in creating even bloody scenes and still endowed with a certain irony that perhaps even in a context like this, that of 'High-Rise's' settings, doesn't spoil. An irony that could also be understood as cynicism, and this is certainly a characteristic found within the work.

The rich and well-stocked cast of actors took part in the film. From Sienna Miller to Luke Evans (in the role of Richard Wilder) and Elisabeth Moss, up to Tom Hiddleston, who I found surprisingly good and who plays the main protagonist of the events, Dr. Robert Laing. Finally, it's impossible not to mention the great Jeremy Irons in the role of the other key character, Anthony Royal, who would ideally constitute the 'nemesis' of Dr. Laing, even though things are more complex than they might seem, as he is practically the creator of the giant condominium, the first to be completed of five identical units being part of a single magnificent real estate project.

But let's come to the content. What is the story of 'High-Rise' or 'Condominium'. I mean, what is the story told by the film, before and at the same time as what would then be its ideological and metaphorical contents.

As mentioned, the events take place within this modern residential complex, particularly in the first skyscraper built on the outskirts of London by the architect Anthony Royal, who lives at the top, in the penthouse, and in the most spacious and luxurious apartment of the entire building. A building that internally includes all the structures and conveniences typical of modern life. There are banks and supermarkets, restaurants, and hairdressers; sauna facilities, gyms, and swimming pools, tennis courts. High-speed elevators are clearly essential for the proper functioning of the structure.

It doesn't take long, however, before the situation begins to get out of control for Roland and all the residents of the condominium. All events occur over three months. First, what we can define as a certain habituation of each one to their belonging to their rank (i.e.: floor) and the resulting discrimination from those belonging to what is considered another social category, and subsequently, the first inevitable dysfunctions in the regular functioning of 'High-Rise' will lead to increasingly intense and violent conflicts. Conflicts primarily of a social nature, accentuated by the 'cadastral' or even somewhat pyramidal hierarchy inherent in the structure, considering the social status, understood strictly in economic terms, practically increases the higher you go up. Practically: it is the rich who live on the upper floors.

However, it is the poor who live on the lower ones, where the access to elevators and basic structures like the supermarket are located. The contrast at this point is inevitable. Furthermore, what happens at this point is a real degeneration of the situation within the complex and a degeneration of the individual who, in a class struggle and territorial battle, regresses to a primitive stage. Soon the condominium will be left to neglect, nor will its inhabitants care to preserve its maintenance and what should be their integrity. Every social contact with the outside will cease to make sense, and amidst heaps of rubble and mountains of garbage, a bloody struggle for survival erupts.

But 'High-Rise' is also the story of what wants to be a real climb. A climb from the lower floors to the terrace where Roland and his wife live and from where not only does one dominate the entire complex with their view and sees from afar a London that throughout the story seems not to exist and is anyway millions of light-years away, but in a place that is seen especially as the place of command, or anyway the climb constitutes something ideal that is in the spirit of every individual and that can mean lust for power and desire to prevail over others but also trying to improve oneself, trying to discover the truth about oneself and all that surrounds us and maybe even pushing beyond what should be our limitations in terms of morality and respect for ourselves and for others.

THE CLIMB. The protagonist of the events, as already mentioned, is Dr. Robert Laing, interpreted by the talented Tom Hiddleston, who frankly I think I have only seen in a couple of more than forgettable films like 'Thor' (don't ask why I watched it, I wouldn't know how to answer) and the disappointing 'Only Lovers Left Alive' by Jim Jarmusch, probably only memorable for the presence of the psych band White Hills. However, I found the actor really very good and indeed positively surprised me. Dr. Laing in the context represented above might in the end appear as a cynical careerist. A kind of monster and a person devoid of feelings, who in his coldness lets slip the tragedy and brutality of the events surrounding him, but he indeed represents in his actions and his thought formula what humanity is according to its base patterns.

Robert Laing is a doctor; he has experienced the loss of his sister and decided to move from central London to live in the condominium for reasons dictated by what we might define as an innate natural curiosity. Robert Laing wants to see and understand what the condominium really is and what it represents in technological and even social terms. He wants to see the future.

In practice, once he has moved, he will never unpack his moving boxes. What these boxes contain, we will never know. Laing will never open them, and when asked, he will reply with a vague voice, 'Sex and paranoia.'

In the total disarray of the structure, where armed gangs of enraged people now closer to the animal dimension than the human one roam, in the total disinterest of the outside world (and therefore also of the law enforcement agencies), Laing begins over time what will be his climb to the attic inhabited by Royal and showing himself at the same time comfortable in this post-apocalyptic landscape and determined to go all the way.

And indeed, he will succeed in his intent and will survive not because he is stronger or better equipped than others. Laing is not a superman, but he simply appears somehow, in what might appear as his total indifference to things, genuinely motivated to go all the way and free of any conditioning beyond what might be defined as a survival instinct. On the other hand, we have his nemesis, Royal, who, like the captain of the Titanic, is not willing to leave the sinking ship, but above all, he does not intend to back down from his position. From the top of the pyramid where he has locked himself first surrounded by loyal friends and then only by women and children and until the inevitable end.

How do you determine who will really prevail? And can survival in this case mean somehow managing to prevail? Where the thin line between survival and existence appears wider than ever.

The film has settings where scenes of violence and actual fights are mixed with settings that made me think of a certain Italian cinema in the style and narrative techniques used. I thought of Elio Petri. But above all of Marco Ferreri, who probably could have been the one to write the ending of this story that doesn't lack grotesque content.

HIGH-RISE. 'High-Rise' is a work clearly loaded with symbolic content, which is not absent in its cinematic rendering. It would be impossible to try to gather and identify them all in a few lines and also unnecessary; at this point, I would leave everything also to what can be the free interpretation of the viewers and according to their sensations during the viewing.

But what is the true message contained within J.G. Ballard's work? We are talking about an intelligent and original author who has somehow innovated like few in the field of literature and science fiction literature. In 'High-Rise', as in other literary works and stories of his, the focus of Ballard's speculative thinking is the human and how and where it is contextualized. Whether it's situations of extreme crowding or complete loneliness, in any case, situations that in some way push him to necessarily come to terms with himself and what is his nature, which according to a certain pessimistic view would then always appear somehow undoubtedly degenerative. Even though at the same time, ingenious, demonstrating from this point of view, the human, great adaptability capacities that probably have no equal concerning life in the animal world.

But how significant can factors like structural ones, see the giant complex built by Royal, and especially those residential and especially peripheral realities created ad hoc, become real ghettos before even being completed. The issue is more than current because we could indeed define it as currently unsurpassed and perhaps insurmountable by virtue of what are habits and that are linked to bad politics and poor administration and up to collusion with the most influential circles of organized crime. Living in Naples, the city where I was born and raised, I could cite several examples of this type, of what have been phenomena of 'structural ghettoization' created at the table, starting from Secondigliano and ending perhaps with that gigantic ghostly and decaying structure that would be the famous Centro Direzionale, a set of skyscrapers (unique in Italy and all of Southern Europe) built in the Poggioreale district and constitutes a sort of citadel built in the eighties by the Japanese Kenzo Tange. Structures that today, thirty years after construction, lie in a state of total decay and abandonment, and that perhaps only the fact the area was intended and therefore used from the beginning to mainly house offices and administrative units, it hasn't had a degeneration that is all in all not so implausible as we might imagine as that of Ballard's work and now brought to the big screen by Ben Wheatley.