IFFBoston Review: 'High-Rise' Towers Above Style Over Substance

Samuel Kaufman ’19 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Expectations play a very important role in how you experience a movie. Unfortunately, a lot of the buzz about High-Rise is that it features naked Tom Hiddleston. Manage your expectations now; you will not see Tom Hiddleston naked. To be fair, you will see him mostly naked, but if you are going into High-Rise expecting to see ‘Loki’s Sceptre’ so to speak, you should skip this one. On the other hand, if you are looking for a gorgeous, funny, brutally violent and socially poignant film, High-Rise should be on the top of your list.
High-Rise is a film adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name, written by J. G. Ballard. The film is about life in a skyscraper apartment building as the residents slowly descend into a Lord of the Flies like tribal state where each floor battles with the others. The story follows Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston), a psychiatrist who, as one of his female neighbors so astutely puts it “is one of those lucky people who looks better without their clothes on”. Laing has recently moved into the building and lives alone on the 25th floor. Hiddleston gives a great understated performance, reminiscent of Christian Bale in American Psycho. For the film to succeed, you have to believe that Laing is the kind of person who every guy wants to befriend and every woman wants to sleep with, while still being not quite all there mentally just under the surface. This is a difficult balance to strike, and one which Hiddleston nails, ensuring that both the comedy and drama land consistently.

The film is full of these odd balancing acts which it pulls off with grace and ease. It is (very darkly) funny at times while still remaining dramatic. It is unrealistic in the narrative while remaining emotionally believable. As a viewer you start wondering at some point why they don’t all just leave the tower, before realizing that they could leave. The point is that they don’t want to. On some core, primal level, the people in this building like the new world they have created. For as ludicrous as the plot gets, the core idea never seems laughable. This is how Western Civilization falls — everyone partying as Rome burns to the ground. It isn’t that they don’t know it’s happening. These people smell the smoke, they see the flames, and they love it.
One of the most striking aspects of High-Rise is the production design. Director Ben Wheatley and Production Designer Mark Tildesley made the daring choice to set the film in the very specific and well-fleshed-out world not of the near future, but of the past’s near future. The film never states what year it takes place in, yet the audience soon becomes keenly aware that this is what people in the 1970s England would have thought was coming in the near future. This is a very difficult thing to pull off, but High-Rise succeeds with flying colors. This is due in large part to the costuming, hair and makeup, and set design, but is further explored with everything from the language to the social-norms. High-Rise is a very good movie all around, but where it really shines is in its world building, which is some of the very best since Mad Max: Fury Road. Other films would struggle to establish the locations with a space as large as a skyscraper, but High-Rise never does. The distinctive set design of each location lets you know what floor you are on at any given time without having to resort to title cards or shots of signs.

The film does have it’s problems. The second act drags, there are sub-plots that are not given nearly enough attention (presumably they were more important in the novel), and there are some characters that served little purpose. Specifically, there were a handful of attractive, older rich women with red hair who are near impossible to tell apart. However, the positives of High-Rise far outweigh the negatives. The film is beautifully shot with the cinematography mirroring the plot, starting off clean and methodical, and then slowly becoming more jerky and violent as the characters do the same. Furthermore, the sound design is incredible, and helps add to the tone of the film. See High-Rise. See it in theatres. It is a powerful, beautiful, smart, balancing act of a movie.
Overall Grade: A-
Watch The Trailer: 
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPghZ5cc_E[/embedyt]