High Rise

It’s very appropriate that the last words in this 'unique and dazzling vision of dystopian Britain' are from the wicked witch herself Margaret Thatcher. Directed by Ben Wheatley and adapted from J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel of the same name by Amy Jump, High Rise is vividly brought to life from the pages of a book that depicts an architecturally designed 40 story block of luxury flats within which we witness the deterioration of human behaviour. A story about the downfall of social class and the hierarchy that underpins its own weak structure which in turn leads to the release of the inner being and thereafter a collapse into violent chaos invoking a war footing between the haves and have-nots. The whole thing symbolic of today's society where the rich get richer and the poor sink ever lower into the traps that poverty sets.

 

 Lang.

Shot in Belfast in Northern Ireland the film stars Tom Hiddleston, as the doctor of Physiology Robert Laing an eligible bachelor who is the newest resident of one of the luxurious apartments and whose lofty location places him amongst the upper class. Laing quickly settles into high society life and meets the building’s eccentric tenants: Charlotte (Sienna Miller) a seductive bohemian single mum who is his upstairs neighbour; Wilder (Luke Evans), a charismatic documentarian and sexual predator who lives with his long suffering pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss); and Mr Royal (Jeremy Irons), the reclusive architect who designed the building. Life seems like paradise to the solitude-seeking Laing. But as power outages become more frequent and building flaws emerge, particularly on the lower floors, the regimented social strata begins to crumble and the building becomes a battlefield in a literal class war.

 

Charlotte.

This vision of Britain could have been lifted from today's newspaper, the suffering of working families at the hands of the moneyed classes and their political lapdogs, the grim reality of people’s lives and the decaying political system that blames the weakest in society for the countries problems. We now follow a world system that sinks further to the extreme right and will decay even further unless the 'high rise' is demolished!

 

Wilder.

I digress from the movie, but that's the affect that this movie has on me, and I imagine many other people of sound mind. The characters are vivid and real, the soundtrack is exceptional, especially the fantastic haunting interpretation of the 1975 Abba hit SOS by Portishead and of course Ballard's story interpreted by Wheatley and Jump is strikingly graphic. If like me you missed this at the cinema it’s now available on DVD. Enjoy while your still able too my friends - its getting ever blacker outside.

A Field in England.

This is the first UK feature film to be available simultaneously in cinemas, on freeveiw TV, on video-on-demand and on DVD and Blu-ray. Since its release I’ve watched it twice, the first time, admittedly fairly late in the evening, I didn’t really understand what was going on, the second time I’m still not totally sure but enjoyed it a great deal more. In an interview that followed the Film4 screening Ben Wheatley admitted that its not meant to be easily understood and deliberately nothing in the movie is explained, we are just parachuted in to a different time zone and left to get on with it!

This is the fourth feature film that Wheatley has directed and edited. The first in 2009 was Down Terrace this was followed by Kill List in 2011 and then came his most successful film to date the black comedy Sightseers (2012). Each of these films is different from the last and the A Field in England (2013) is no exception.   

A Field in England.

Its 1648 and we are in the midst of the English Civil War which , as every school boy will tell you, involved Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads and King Charles the First’s Cavaliers, a war which eventually lead to the curtailing of the Monarch’s power only allowing them to rule with the consent of Parliament. The first character we meet is the academic astrologer and lace maker Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) who escapes from his master and henceforth the battle. He meets up with two other deserters, Jacob (Peter Ferdinando) and Friend (the comedian Richard Glover) a man with the gift of reincarnation, a fourth man appears, Cutler (Ryan Pope) and invites the others to join him in a nearby Ale House (old fashioned parlance for a pub) and sets out across the field of the title which we notice has a wonderful crop of magic mushrooms which at one stage get cooked and eaten! Part way across this piece of English countryside our four travellers literally pull, with the aid of a rope a fifth man, the Irish alchemist O’Neil (the star of this years EIFF Michael Smiley), who suddenly appears, tortures Whitehead, then instructs him to locate the spot where some undefined buried treasure is hidden and orders the others to dig it up.

The academic astrologer and lacemaker Whitehead.

Shot in monochrome in a field in Farnham Surrey, this unique movie has been written by Amy Jump, who had an input into the scripts for both Kill List and Sightseers, whose dialog contains an imaginative use of the English language as well as a great sense of humour which runs right through its 91 minutes running time. In fact some of it is laugh out loud funny including a great line about Essex and dirty hands, and also the ‘I’m going for a shite scene’ which is hilarious in a crude sort of way and there’s Whitehead great line ‘books are easier to turn than people’.   Laurie Rose’s cinematography brings the story to life with a monochrome texture that creates a distinct period feel. Also of note are the posed shots that give the impression that they are being posed for a future generation like the portraiture found in books of the Wild West.   An clever and effective piece of avant-garde film making from Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley, If this humble piece has intrigued, then watch the movie: at least twice!

Down Terrace.

Ben Wheatley’s debut film, Down Terrace (2009) plots a pathway to Sightseers (2012) via Kill List (2011) underlining the perceived normality of violent death and the lack of concern over murder for little or no reason.  

The film opens with father and son, Bill (Robert Hill) and Karl (Robin Hill), leaving the local District Law Court, apparently getting away with a charge of drug dealing. Both men, and wife and mother Maggie (Julia Deakin), are convinced they have been ‘grassed up’ and set about discovering the identity of the culprit intending to administer their own form of justice. To make matters worse Karl ex girlfriend Valda  (Kerry Peacock) arrives at the family home to announce that she expecting a baby, but Bill is not convinced that his son is the father.

Father Bill (Robert Hill)

Mother Maggie (Julia Deakin)

Those of you that are familiar with Wheatley’s impressive, but small, body of work will not need telling that this is not your standard ‘Brit gangster flick’ more a study of a dysfunctional working class family who just so happen to be a drug dealing gangsters. Shot like a fly on the wall home movie at Robert Hill’s house in Brighton, where the film is set, not the tourist seaside resort but on the large modern housing scheme known as the Whitehawk Estate.  Robin Hill, real life son of debut actor Robert Hill, co-wrote the story with Ben Wheatley, they detail charactors that are played by a cast that make this black comedy totally believable. One of who, the professional hit man Pringle (the expressive Michael Smiley), has childcare problems so he ends up taking his toddler along with him on a botched hit!

Karl (Robin Hill) 

Shoot for a minimal budget of £6000 it went on to win Best British Feature at the Raindance Festival and Wheatley won Best Newcomer at the London Evening Standard awards, but unfortunately the film did not get a wide release. Where Sightseers can be described as Mike Leigh's Nuts in May (1976) with serial killing, Down Terrace is Secrets and Lies (1996) with plastic sheeting and duck tape!!!!!  

Pringle (Michael Smiley) with his toddler.

Sightseers.

The Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club is beginning to worry me!! The conversation that took place following this week’s movie involved a discussion that centred on whether all the killings in the film were valid, and the funny part about it was that this intelligent adult audience agreed that all of them were .… except maybe the lone jogger? So if mysterious dead bodies start appearing across Dumfries and Galloway I would suggest that the police start their investigations questioning those that attended the Film Club screening of the British black comedy Sightseers (2012)!!!!!!

Ben Wheatley’s third feature film following Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011) was hosted by Rachel Findlay who had really done her homework on both Wheatley and the two main actors/writers Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who played Tina and Chris, and I make no apology for reproducing her introduction in full as follows: 

Evil has a knitted jumper!

Ben Wheatley's route to success in filmmaking is pretty interesting. Initially he made short films and animations, which he would send off in the usual way to film festivals. Then he started putting his work onto his own website, and concentrated on animations at this point in time, mainly because this was easier to control, coordinate and complete as it involved only him and his own time.

He then started to get involved with various online communities, and in particular found a web forum called beta. He started posting pieces of his work on the forum, which gave him instant feedback, and helped him to develop his current projects. Around this time he created a movie of his friend appearing to jump over a moving car, which went viral on YouTube with over 10 million views.  Large media companies started to contact him to get him involved in commercial projects and in 2006 he won a Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival for a viral marketing campaign for a video gaming company. From this, he went on to work on several television comedy shows, including BBC3's comedy The Wrong Door. It was on this show that he originally worked with the two stars of this week’s film, Alice Lowe and Steve Oram.

Alice and Steve are both from the Midlands, and when they first met and worked together, mainly on TV comedies, they discovered a shared childhood love of camping holidays. Partly from this they developed the characters Tina and Chris who grew into a stand-up comedy act. They made a short film to pitch this idea to TV companies, but struggled to get any interest. At some point, the pitch was put to Ben Wheatley, and he took the project on. The final screenplay for the movie was written by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, but with additional material from Amy Jump, who is also Wheatley's wife.[1]

Chris and Tina.

Tina is thirty something, living with her over powering crippled mother who will not forgive her for the death of there beloved pooch Poppy, who accidently got caught up with Tina’s knitting. When her new boyfriend Chris offers to take the brow beaten spinster on a caravan holiday Tina readily accepts even if her neurotic mother is dead against it, who announces to Chris on their departure that she does not like him (mothering laws eh!). Setting off on their caravan travelogue the idea is to visit places of interest that the rather domineering Chris has planned out for them. But the journey gets a little more complex when they visit the Crich Tramway Village in Derbyshire and Chris backs the caravan over a lout for dropping litter and kills him. Instead of Tina being appalled by this incident she seems to be turned on by it and gradually becomes the more assertive partner. Continuing on their road trip they encounter one or two other obnoxious folk and a giant pencil!

A visit to the Pencil Museum.

Howls of laughter accompanied the viewing of the movie followed by suggestions that parts of this brummie accented Tarantinoesque film should be used in a Caravan Club of Great Britain promotion or in an anti-litter campaign? Wheatley’s been very clever in that the killing spree seems completely normal and the lengthy development of the two main characters and the normality of the detail in the film has given us two totally believably, rounded individuals whom strangely enough you cannot fail to like. The film brings to mind Mike Leigh’s 1976 BBC Play for Today Nuts in May, which also involves a couple on a camping trip, Withnail and I (1987) where two young ‘gentlemen’ leave the big city for a trip to the countryside and Natural Born Killers (1994) a Tarantino story about a couple, both victims of a traumatic childhood, who become lovers and mass murderers but none of these influences are allowed to encroach on this splendid British comedy.  I could not leave this blog without mentioning the wonderful cinematography that underlines the beautiful English countryside and for once a soundtrack that actually enhances the movie. Can’t wait for the Sightseers sequel to see how Tina, on her return from her eventful holiday, deals with her mother?

The End.

[1] Rachel Findley RBC Film Club Introduction 21^st January 2013.