Originally contained in: Junkyl
was born in 1972 in Ben Wheatley. He is a cult director who has attracted much attention in the British film industry in recent years. The last time I saw his movie was "The Sightseeer" produced in 2012. This film about a couple who went out to travel turned into a bloody murder is quite shocking, mixed with violence and black humor, which fascinated me at the time. .
Wheatley's new work "Skyscrapers" brought JGBallard's dystopian novel of the same name as "unfilmable" to the screen. This novel constructed a fantasy urban island in Britain in the 1970s, a large-scale residential area composed of super high-rise apartment houses, which looked rich and orderly, but quickly went to destruction.
In this film, Wheatley uses two rhythmic cross-editing clips to interlace the private world of the protagonist Dr. Robert Laing (played by Tom Hiddleston) and the panoramic view of the building. They are like intermissions that connect up and down, dividing the film into three parts.
The first part uses narrative techniques to show the audience its ending: a doomsday-like chaos, blood and mess. At this time, the first episode of "Interlude" appeared. The camera returned to three months ago, leading the audience to understand the internal and external structure of the building along with the newly moved Laing, and explore what happened. Whether it’s Laing’s new life, clean environment, harmonious order, and vigorous residents (at least it seems), they are completely different from what they will be three months later, accompanied by the majestic soundtrack created by Clint Mansell, as if they were all proclaimed. The building's ambitions are as high as clouds. At the end of the day, a dangerous hint was planted.
By the time the second episode of "Interlude" appeared, Laing's heart and the order of the building had been shaky, and a series of violence and loss of control were about to strike. At this time, the familiar melody and rhythm appeared again, but its tonality had changed. For darkness and chaos.
Hierarchy is one of the attributes of a closed society. Although the residents of this building actually belong to the working class, a hierarchy from top to bottom is formed within them. In this, there are several roles that not only act as representatives of different classes, but also become the key to the plot narrative.
The architect Royal, played by Jeremy Irons, lives on the top of the building, where there are private elevators, large balconies and gardens (even raising a horse). In this island-like society, Royal symbolizes those in power who have moved away from the grassroots and have lost control. This residential area is regarded by Royal as an experiment on the future of society. In fact, he is a practitioner of the "radiant city" (the radiant city) theory proposed by the Swedish architect Le Corbusier in 1924, and one of countless architects who have tried to use "utopian" urban planning to transform social values.
The location of "Skyscraper" is not clear, it is about a suburb of a big city (perhaps London), a place we now usually call the "high-rise garden community" under construction. At its center is an artificial lake, and there are five 40-story super-high residential buildings next to it. Only the building where the story happened was put into use, while the other buildings are still under construction. Under the guidance of "Glory City", it seems to provide residents with all the facilities they need: supermarkets, gyms, massages, swimming pools, etc. Of course, the most indispensable is the spacious parking lot, so that we can feel It is an ambition that tries to swallow all one's world.
Richard Wilder (played by Luke Evans) and his wife Helen (played by Elisabeth Moss) working on the TV station live in the apartment on the ground floor with their two children and the unborn child. This place is called "the place under the shadow", and there are low-income office workers, the so-called "real family". Wilder symbolizes those characters who are often regarded as "unstable elements" by society because of their poor life, and his anger and resentment have also created a series of storms.
The single mother Charlotte (played by Sienna Miller) who lives on the 26th floor is a somewhat mysterious existence. She threw her child to the nanny, but was passionate about all kinds of affairs in the building society. She lives on the middle floor, but seems to have an unclear connection with Royal on the top to Richard on the bottom, and even controls the gossip in the building. In my opinion, she symbolizes the will of the building itself in a sense. In the beginning, she was also the one who brought Laing, who had been living alone, into this society through the wine glass that fell on the lower balcony.
Laing, who lives on the 25th floor, is a representative of the "middle class" in the building. The characteristics of the middle class residents are that they seem to be very close to the upper and lower floors, and they seem to be far away. Laing established a relationship with the top floor of the building for playing squash, but when he stepped into a medieval aristocratic party organized by the upper-class residents, he was mercilessly ridiculed and expelled.
Laing is described as a "Byronian style" character. He is alone in spirit, dissatisfied with the shackles of reality, but lost in his own world and finds no way out. Wheatley described the past tense of this character in a vague way, which made me vaguely feel some familiar shadows in "The Tourist". He is regarded as the "most polite" person in the building, but his revenge on the upper-level residents kicked off the collapse of the building's order.
It is not an easy task to build a complex and contradictory society like "Skyscrapers". Wheatley and his wife Amy Jump (the screenwriter of the film) did not set boundaries for this story, but tried to show this society to the audience. The multiple dimensions. In the end, they accomplished such a work with a clear narrative and smooth lens language. And audiences who like Wheatley’s violent and humorous style can continue to be satisfied in this film: unlike the violent scenes of "Look, I’m so scary" and the funny intentions of "Look, I’m so funny", it is full of British style. Style, joking over violence, but uneasy hidden behind humor.
As a conception of social life in the 1970s, the world it describes is not unfamiliar to us. Therefore, it is very interesting to compare the world in the film with our real world, especially the life experience in Chinese cities, what are the differences, and what are the similarities. Regarding the intention of this film, some people think that it is a manifestation of the chaos of anarchism, some people think that it implies the unique meaning of the female world, and some even think that it shows the error of "diversified communities" and "diversified use" (such The conclusion is obviously biased).
But I prefer to go back to the origin of the "skyscraper" world, what it describes is the ideal world in Le Corbusier's mind. The world looks efficient, orderly, and glamorous, keeping residents' activity needs within its scope. But when the upper-class residents asked Laing, a brain doctor, to perform brain surgery on Wilder, who was already regarded as the source of social riots at this time, the latter said the most important thing ignored by this "Glory City"-human beings. the nature of the pursuit of freedom brought about by the unpredictable:
living in a High-Rise the requires a special of the type of behavior.
live in skyscrapers require a specific pattern of behavior
Acquiescent.
submissive
restrained.
restraint
Perhaps even slightly mad.
may require A little bit pathologically,
what it talks about is the failure of a life designed to fight against human nature.
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