Ben Wheatley is to adapt a work by JG Ballard? This can only end disastrously. I mean who the hell is this Wheatley guy anyway? Unless he’s somehow managed to direct some of the most unique and subversive works of British cinema in the last deca-oh wait he totally has. Yes, perhaps the most exciting filmmaker in the country is getting his chance to bust onto the mainstream with an adaptation of new wave science fiction novel High Rise.
For
full disclosure I haven’t read the novel myself or indeed any of Ballard’s
work. As a sci-fi author he’s certainly been on my radar but I’ve never got
round to checking out anything he’s written and presently I’m still working
through my long-ass reading list. If I feel an itch for some Hard SF I’ll get
started on the Culture Series out of respect for its recently deceased author.
Plus I’ve always got plenty of Dick to fall back on.
One
thing I do know is that Ballard is a heavily respected figure in the genre.
Even if he’s not as prominent as the likes of Phillip K. Dick he’s certainly
contributed as much to cyberpunk and futuristic dystopia. This is where we find
ourselves in High Rise, set in a luxury high-rise apartment building where
affluence gives rise to all manner of depravity. It’s Lord of the Flies starring Gideon Osborne’s Family and absolutely
perfect material for Wheatley.
The
thing about Ben Wheatley, the thing that has made his most recent work the hits
that they have been, has been his ability to manage shifts in tone. Kill List for example is one part
domestic drama, one part hitman thriller and one part The Wicker Man. And while I feel the third act is too desultory to be
effective the transition from kitchen sink to claw hammer execution is seamless.
Leading man Jay (played by Utopia’s
brilliant Neil Maskell) seethes with impotent aggression in every scene leaving
no doubt that the discontent family man could be a hardened hitman.
Similarly
Sightseers feels like a jovial
character comedy, merely disrupted by the odd murder. True this owes much to
the writing and acting talents of Alice Lowe and Steve Oram. However it’s
Wheatley’s direction that gives many of the deaths a slapstick feel punctuated
by a complete drop in tone. It’s a sign of the man’s understanding of comic
time and ability to convey the effect on screen. All of this results in Sightseers being one of the funniest
films of last year and nowhere near as jarring as the premise would suggest.
The
prospect of Wheatley mixing the soft tones of an elegant gathering with the brutality
and blood that represents how low humans can sink has a lot of promise. Like
this year’s The Purge it has the chance to say something about the
isolationist attitude of some of the wealthy, hopefully without becoming
preachy. It also represents the potential for a turning point in Wheatley’s career.
A film by Ben Wheatley with the marketability of ‘based on a book by JG Ballard’
could see a much wider release than his previous films. A big hit could propel
Wheatley into the mainstream with the money and creative freedom to achieve a
larger passion project.
This
is all speculation of course. The reason Wheatley’s work exists of the fringes,
beloved mostly by cinephiles, is because that’s the audience they play best to.
And like Ken Loach, there’s no indication that the director of A Field in England would even want to
enter the mainstream. That might not even be the best place for High Rise given that previous
adaptations of Ballards work have either been the infamous, under-the-radar
psychosexual thriller Crash or the
comparatively conventional Empire of the
Sun. Either way with the substantial
pedigree of Ballard and Wheatley combined; High
Rise might be one of the most interesting British films for a long time.
