Hacker Cinema
High-Rise
2015 · Film · 119 min
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.
5 positive3 negative4 neutralfrom 12 commenters
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14 comments on Hacker News
Perhaps his best known work is the novels that were made into movies, “Crash” and “High-Rise”, and neither is science fiction.
There’s also “Empire of the Sun” that was adapted by Steven Spielberg, but it’s autobiographical so doesn’t really count.
Also “High-Rise” movie
Also... Money is Theft and The Economy is a Lie. Education inoculates you against new facts. Our meritocratic democracy ensures government by the mediocre.
As Paul Virillo once quipped, "the invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck." And we appear to have shot the ensign who was looking out for icebergs.
"They Live" was a documentary. "Idiocracy" is far too optimistic to be accurate. Reflexive modernity has made Ballard's "High Rise" into a love story.
Not mentioned in the article, but this was what J. G. Ballard's novel (and later film) High Rise was based on.
I didn't like the movie of High-Rise because it changes the whole point of the book. In the movie it was conflict between the rich and poor people in the apartment tower (basically redoing Snowpiercer but in a building). In the book, it was clear this was a luxury building. Everyone is wealthy if they can afford to live there. The point was that these people were so bored with their comfortable lives that they started fighting each other for no reason.
Good call. Personally I point people towards High-Rise which is an older book but has the benefit of being made into a pretty good relatively recent movie staring Tom Hiddleston. US perspective here, but it seems prescient in a weird Ballardian way as well w/ what may or may not be happening (who can tell unless it happens to you anymore) in Denver: https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-law-firm-report-claims-venezuelan-gang-stranglehold-apartments-takeover-began-2023/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Rise_(novel)
The movie made from "High-Rise" is completely off the hook. So bizarre. I liked it. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPghZ5cc_E
Fwiw.. High Rise does a nice job of describing a smooth, continuous, piecewise-imperceptible transition from sanity to insanity. (As does Cronenberg's film Dead Ringers. In contrast to the film Falling Down, which coughs up an insanity hairball in the encounter with the Korean shopkeeper, eliding the need for a lot of character development.)
His prescience isn't what makes him interesting. In many ways he is writing about the past and the present.
He is unique for his tone. "Ballardian" conveys something immediately recognisable to anyone that's read more than a handful of his short stories and it conveys something that is fairly unique.
The recent craze for "liminal spaces" captures some of the flavour. But it's also intrinsically British and very much a 70s thing. Maybe it's just my memory of Britain in the 70s but the movie of Crash failed to capture the right mood, whereas High Rise did remarkably well.
High Rise is a novel, not a short story.
The themes in High Rise are social/political, not sci-fi. I can't really judge how the texts compare; I read High Rise a long time ago. The tower-block of the title is an allegory for a stratified society, divided by class, gradually breaking down. I'd say it's still relevant - even resonant.
But I don't recommend the movie.
I read High Rise ages ago, and thought it was brilliant. The movie is forgettable, despite plenty of action and violence.
This is honestly the most hilarious possible misread of J.G. Ballard, perhaps one of the most overtly politically ideological sci-fi authors who ever wrote. Read High-Rise (or watch the surprisingly good movie!). Read Concentration City.
Don't get what's "great" about these movies. According to IMDb, the ratings are: Synchronicity: 5.5 Lazer Team: 5.7 Southbound: 5.9 The Witch: 6.7 10 Cloverfield Lane: 7.3 Midnight Special: 6.7 The Lobster: 7.1 Hardcore Henry: 6.8 Elstree 1976: 6.1 High-Rise: 5.7 TMNT: Out of the Shadows: 6.0 Swiss Army Man: 7.1 Kubo and the two strings: 8.1
Surprised I didn't see any of the following on that list: ARQ (6.4), Project Almanac (6.4), Self/Less (6.5), Chappie (6.9), Star Trek: Beyond (7.2), Ex Machina (7.7), Train to Busan (7.6), The Martian (8.0).
And, yet again, a dystopian J G Ballard (late British sci-fi author and author of Empire Of The Sun) story becomes reality..
Ballard's High Rise (1975) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Rise - shares a lot of similarities with this outcome (though the tower in the book was in London) and is a fine read to boot. The eventual outcome is the formation of different "clans" of residents based on blocks of floors having intra-building "wars" with each other. I believe that, finally, a movie is being created of this film by the guy who created Cube.