High-Rise  ★★★

HIGH-RISE is not for everyone.

Don’t get me wrong; it is, at times, a masterful work by an impressive director.

But it’s also a piece that is difficult to enter and relate to, based on a novel by JG Ballard, a renowned British author of high-concept drama with science fiction elements.

One of the most controversial films ever made, Crash, about a couples’ fetish for motor accidents was based on a Ballard novel. Directed by Canadian horror auteur David Cronenberg, it was a film I admired, but haven’t re-visited.

In High-Rise, Ballard documents the rise of consumerism, greed and contempt for others and the resulting fall of society and devolution of man through the device of battling residents in a massive apartment building located in a concrete wasteland.

Tom Hiddleston is excellent as the main protagonist, a GP who moves into the apartment building and becomes a subject of interest to a range of people from different levels and classes.

These include the building’s architect, played by Jeremy Irons, who lives with his wife in the top-floor garden penthouse, and the wife of a lower-class working man confined to the bottom levels and lower rungs of society.

She is played well by Sienna Miller, while others in the fine cast include Luke Evans, James Purefoy and Elizabeth Moss.

English director Ben Wheatley brings great creativity and flair to the task. Wheatley was previously responsible for a clutch of innovative and interesting films – Kill List, the wonderful Sightseers and A Field in England.

High-Rise is beautiful to look at with interesting themes to ponder afterwards, but the narrative at time becomes difficult to follow and the characters are not sympathetic in any way.

Like Crash, it’s another film I admired while experiencing it, but don’t need a repeat viewing.