I first met and spoke with Ben Wheatley in Brighton, where he lives with his wife and collaborator, Amy Jump. I was there for the inaugural Dark and Stormy Crime Festival, where Wheatley was screening his existential hit man thriller, Kill List. That film, along with Sightseers, Down Terrace and A Field in England, comprise a body of work that has rightly cemented Wheatley’s status as a raucous, disruptive, independent voice within the sometimes staid confines of the British specialty film industry. Wheatley’s new film High-Rise — an adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s 1975 dystopian sci-fi novel and his highest-budgeted to […]
by Alix Lambert on Apr 21, 2016Cinematographer Laurie Rose began his career as a feature film DP with Down Terrace, the debut film from British director Ben Wheatley. Rose has gone on to shoot all five of Wheatley’s features, including his latest, High-Rise. The first major adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel since David Cronenberg’s Crash, High-Rise depicts a society in all-out decay. The film is set largely in a single apartment building, where tenants’ petty squabbles and decadent parties devolve into a hellish dystopian vision of mankind at its most feral. Below, Rose discusses his love of practical effects, his career with Wheatley, and how Andrew Bujalski’s […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Apr 20, 2016Here’s a fascinating article by Mark Sinclair in the Creative Review about graphic design in Ben Wheatley’s High Rise. In most films, contemporary and near-period, production designers will seek clearance to use actual logos and products. When those clearances aren’t granted for whatever reason, the art department will mock something up. But unless there’s been real attention paid to these graphics, they can often look cheesy — like the film equivalent of clip art. The fantastic, dystopian qualities of High Rise — a science fiction tale set in an imaginary pre-Thatcherite early ’70s — has enabled Wheatley and his designers […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2016“How’s the high life?” Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) is asked. “Prone to fits of narcissism, mania and power failure,” he replies. This new UK trailer for Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise establishes the woozily dystopic tone. (No, Portishead’s much-discussed cover of ABBA’s “SOS” isn’t in it.) “High-Rise begins at the end, with Tom Middleston amidst ruin and bloodstains, roasting the leg of a dog on a spit, so when his character Dr. Robert Laing first moves into the building, we already know where things are headed,” Whitney Mallett wrote from last year’s TIFF. “Sex, violence, and retro-modernism are everywhere, even […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 9, 2016TORONTO by Scott Macaulay High Rise has long been considered one of the J.G. Ballard’s most “adaptable” books, with the author’s dispassionate meditations on disassociation, inner and outer space, and the psychologies and paraphilias unleashed by 20th-century life encased within the sturdy confines of a modern apartment building and a class-based tale of survival. Nonetheless, High Rise has taken decades to reach the screen, despite the attachments of numerous directors, including Vincenzo Natali, Bruce Robinson and, revealed producer Jeremy Thomas at a talk at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, interest from Nicolas Roeg. Premiering at the festival in Platform, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 28, 2015Perhaps the most divisive film at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival was in the inaugural Platform competition section. High-Rise was originally published by author J.G. Ballard in 1975; now, English filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Sightseers) has brought to the big screen the tale of Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston), a new resident in a luxury apartment building who becomes entangled in a civil war between the building’s different social classes. The media interest kicked into overdrive for the social satire when Soda Pictures purchased the Canadian distribution rights. During the craziness, Filmmaker was able to sit down with Wheatley to talk about […]
by Trevor Hogg on Sep 22, 2015