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.

The Raven 2011.

The Raven.

It worry’s me greatly when two very intelligent young men, who views I normally respect, declare, during the Film Club’s discussion, that cinemas are no longer able to sell tickets for a good quality adult movie! They also informed us that the biggest market is for youth orientated movies and the ‘safe’ type of film that appeals to what’s referred to as the ‘grey pound’. The only reason for this ridiculous state of affairs is obviously brainwashing!  Indoctrinating the young popcorn demographic into accepting more and more second rate American unintelligent rubbish until they think this is all that’s on offer. A successful movie for the over sixty fives is know judged purely on whether or not they leave the cinema smiling? On leaving the cinema where I first saw The Deerhunter in 1978 I was in tears does this make it a bad film? Thankfully there are still filmmakers about, mainly from Britain and world cinema that can still make a descent imaginative, intelligent, challenging and creative movie.

This weeks Robert Burns Centre Theatre Film Club movie was The Raven (2012) and was hosted by one of the RBC’s young programmers James Pickering who wasted no time in getting through his introduction so the paying audience could get on with the film. An American thriller set in Boston in 1849, its a fictional account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe’s life, in which the author, poet, editor and literary critic pursues a serial killer whose murders mirror those in Poe’s tales of mystery and the macabre particular The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Pit and the Pendulum both of which have been made into feature films. 

John Cusack plays Edgar Allan Poe.

Directed by James McTeigue an Australian whose directorial debut was V For Vendetta (2006), before this he was an assistant director on various feature films including Star Wars II (2002) and The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003). The rather puzzling Edgar Allan Poe, whose actual death was probably shrouded in more mystery than that shown in the film, was played by John Cusack who seems to have lost his way since great films like Being John Malkovich (1999), The Thin Red Line (1998) Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) and the award winning The Grifters (1990). The English actress Alice Eve, who you may remember from Starter for 10 (2006), plays Poe’s love interest Emily Hamilton with her father portrayed by Brendan Gleeson whose best role amongst many is Sergeant Gerry Boyle in the excellent Irish black comedy The Guard (2011), now there’s a film that makes you leave the cinema with a broad grin. Welshman Luke Evans (Tamara Drew 2011, The Blitz 2011, The Three Musketeers 2011) plays the dynamic Inspector Emmett Fields.

The murders mirror Poes stories.

As my esteemed colleague remarked if you suspend your disbelief The Raven is a moderately entertaining gothic thriller with some great period detail and was generally enjoyed by the film club audience. There were one or two reservations the main one being that the villain was not signposted as the film evolved and was not revealed until the very end, something that did not spoil my enjoyment of the film as I felt that is was more a study of Poe’s psyche than a murder mystery. We all agreed that language was used to great effect by the main character, enriching the film. It was compared with the two recent Sherlock Holmes films, which in my opinion were not as good, full of stupid and unnecessary banter between Holmes and Watson. The only thing that spoilt this film was the completely out of place end credit that would have been more at home included in a Bourne or Bond film and not in a period drama.

Thought you may be interested in this press article that involves the country that last weeks movie was set in, people should read this before they see the film! Yemen on brink of food crisis.