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High-Rise
Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival September 13,2015
Plot (Spoiler Alert)Dr. Robert Laing is the newest resident of a luxurious apartment that is turning in a garbage dump by the people who live there. 
Blaine: Director Ben Wheatley was looking through his book shelf and he came across “High-Rise”. As he was reading through the novel, Ben asked himself why no one has made “High-Rise” into a film. Ben assumed someone might have already bought the rights to “High-Rise”, so he asked his agent if he could look for whoever owned those rights. Thankfully, it didn’t take that long for Ben to learn that producer Jeremy Thomas had been trying to turn the novel into the movie since 1975. Jeremy felt it was about time someone had wanted to make “High-Rise” just as much as he did. Amy Jump has written screenplays for every movie Ben has directed, which means he must trust her a lot to develop a script, and so she did the screenplay for “High-Rise” and the project was finally moving along after decades. Jeremy had an idea of who the film’s leading man could be and that was Tom Hiddleston, who worked with him on a movie called “Only Lovers Left Alive”. Jeremy told Tom about this project he was developing with Ben Wheatley and Tom got excited about it fast before Jeremy got a chance to explain the plot. Tom has seen a lot of Ben Wheatley’s work and is a fan, so Tom was happy enough to do the project just to work with Ben. Tom even got to look at the script and thought Amy Jump’s adaption was so well written. He loved reading every page. Tom Hiddleston said there aren’t that many films like “High-Rise" being made anymore and it’s like a 1970s movie. “High-Rise” feels like something out of a Stanley Kubrick. It’s a drama, but it feels more like a dark comedy because it has a lot of humor. But it’s an apocalyptic movie, so it’s not like most movies that are in the 1970s that show reality. It’s a little like Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”, because the place that Alex lives (in that movie) is all destroyed inside (just the hallways and outside, but inside their apartment is nice). It kind of just shows what it’s like when society starts breaking down and falling a part. At the beginning of “High-Rise” it’s like you are looking at the post-apocalyptic world and Tom Hiddleston’s character looks like he is struggling to survive. A lot of movies start off with something that takes place in the future and then goes back to the past so you can see how it all started. There are five high-rise tower blocks being built and they surround a ornamental lake like an open hand. The tower starts off so nice and neat and then after this birthday party it looks like a bomb hit it and becomes a junk yard. Tom Hiddleston’s character, Lang, is a physiologist who is very interested in human behavior and the anatomy of the brain. He moves into the High-Rise to to get away from all of that whenever he needs a break. You see Robert Lang wearing one suit through almost the whole movie. He doesn’t wear anything else but that suit and exercise clothes when he goes to the gym. People like Charlotte tell him he is the only person who looks so good in the suit. Lang lives in the middle floor between the rich people on the top and the poor people who wish they were on the top floor, but have to stay on the bottom. Ben’s idea of the high-rise tower was you would want to live there. The high-rise has more than just apartment rooms, it also has a pool, a sports center, a grocery store. When you’re created a look that is referencing a different time period, you have to look through tons of old photographs or painting just to see how everything looked back then and Ben and his team looked through 70s advertisement as their reference. While scouting for a location, Ben and his team found a building that resembled a 1970s sports center. So that’s where scenes where that involved the pool and the sports areas. My dad thought that the way they designed the building, with the richer people on the upper floors, led to the break down of society in the building, because it created envy from the people on the lower floors. If they hadn’t divided it into “rich and poor” there would have been more community in the building, instead of it breaking down into class differences, which led to the destruction of the society, which is represented by the building. There’s a lot of humor in “High-Rise”. Towards the beginning of “High-Rise” at one of the neighbor's parties, Charlotte, it shows a wife dancing into the bathroom with another man and the husband can clearly see them from the other side of the room. It is obvious the man is going to plow her and they’re not keeping a look out so that no one notices them having an affair and it’s pretty funny. Another neighbor, Richard Wilder, who lives on the lower floor is making of ass of himself. He is all about having fun and despises the people on the upper floor because they are so successful. Richard is also trying flirt and fool around with women, when he is a married man with children. His wife, Helen, expecting another child and he’s too busy having fun when he should be by her side. However, Helen doesn’t’t really trust her husband at all, so she has no problems. I ask myself why marry someone like Richard, I mean it’s like he doesn’t know his family exists. Helen I would say is strong because even though she’s the one looking after her children still she is a very calm woman. Helen wishes they could live on the higher floor too, but they can’t afford it. Lang is a gentleman to Helen and even though he likes to have fun too, still he acts like a grown up, unlike Wilder. Lang is also there for Helen whenever she needs it and they have an affair one time and do a slow dance. But nothing serious goes on between them like a romantic relationship, even Laing is the type of man Helen really deserves in life. However things get better for Helen in the end. She has her child and gets to live on the top floor. Now that the building doesn’t look like a paradise anymore, people just do whatever they want. The place is a dump so there’s no rules. The scene that makes me laugh the most is when Richard Wilder punches one of the other characters, Skinner Simmons, down and Skinner doesn’t put up a fight. The reason it’s funny is because Richard looks like he’s the drunk who is going to get it, but instead it’s the other guy who gets it. The number one woman Richard wants to get laid with is Charlotte, played by Sienna Miller, but she prefers Laing. Every time Richard tries getting close to Charlotte, he pushes her away. Richard is making a fool of himself and trying to expose what a terrible place the high-rise is. The building’s architect, Anthony Royal, played by Jeremy Irons, is watching his creation fall apart and turning into a hell hole. These wild parties are being caused by a rivalry against the top and lower floor. They are both trying to show who can throw a better party. Sometime later, Richard has had enough and forces himself on Charlotte. From the looks of it, Richard rapes Charlotte. Charlotte could have ran and avoided Richard because he was down on the floor. She could have ran off before he grabbed her. Richard finally gets what he deserves in the end. Richard is stabbed to death by Charlotte and a few other women. It’s like putting down a will animal. At the beginning of “High-Rise”, Laing looked like he had nothing left in the world, but seeing him lay in the bed with Charlotte shows he is not alone and I’m happy for him. My rating on “High-Rise” is five out of five stars. Song: SOS Artist: Abba |