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| Poster to High Rise (2016) |
“The ones who are a real danger are the self-contained types
like you.”
The protagonist of the film, well to-do brain surgeon Dr.
Robert Laing is given this insight into
his character by Richard Wilder, an aptly-named TV documentary maker who
inhabits the lowest floors of the high rise, many floors below Laing. Wilder is
the impulsive, passionate and angry foil to Laing’s cool, repressed detachment
and the two become as close to friends as is allowed in the tense, paranoid
atmosphere of the high rise and its unfolding anarchic story.
The accusation highlights the fact that the building, designed
to perfection by architect Anthony Royal
who lives in the top-floor penthouse, is not made for people to live together,
but for people to live individually, in box-like compartments, separate and
distant from the neighbours on all sides.
Royal has his own
lavish garden on the roof and his own private lift. Those living on the lower
floors have less light coming in through their windows and are the first to
suffer a power-cut. There is here a nod to the recent real-life furore
surrounding ‘poor doors’, whereby developers of apartment buildings provide
separate hidden entrances and services for less wealthy inhabitants. This,
together with grudging acquiescence
by many developers to provide a legal proportion of ‘affordable’ flats, mirrors
the attitude of Royal, who prides himself on his ‘crucible for change’ when in
fact he has no interest in the other residents, visiting the lower floors only
when an extreme situation calls for it.
The ‘high rise’ was synonymous with the state provision of
housing in the 70s, when JG Ballard wrote the book. He uses it, however, as an
‘extreme metaphor’ for the class system, for the difficulties we face when
having to deal with each other. The building is a hot-box which only takes one
incident to overheat and bring the people inside into disrepute. Our desire to
live as a community, but also to cut ourselves off leads to tension and
insecurity, and this in turn brings out our very best (or worst) survival
instincts.
Our narrator Laing is a curious character as he is able to
transcend all floors. Royal is comfortable spending time with him, as is
Wilder. This may be because he is our protagonist, but it also shows us the
character needed to survive. He doesn’t have the hot-headed passion of Wilder
or the privileged aloofness of Royal. He realises that to get by he must be
both, and neither. He is self-contained, and that is why he survives.
High Rise (2015) Directed by Ben Wheatley [Film]. UK: Recorded Picture Company.
High Rise (2015) Directed by Ben Wheatley [Film]. UK: Recorded Picture Company.
