Hoi! Today I want to talk to you guys about a book to movie adaptation
that I completely left out of my list when I was doing
the first half of 2016.
And it is one that, kind of only came onto my radar about two weeks ago.
And it is an adaptation of the book High-Rise, by J.G. Ballard,
who I've heard of before, because I had to read one of his books,
Drowned World, in my apocalyptic fiction course that I did during my masters.
I don't have any distinct memories of this book
or whether I read the entire thing,
but when I heard that this is being made into a film
I was quite interested.
So, at this point in time, I've only just started the book,
but I wanna tell you a little bit about the basic setup of it.
I also have a bit of a surprise at the end of this video, so keep watching.
So, this book was published in 1975,
and it is the story of Dr. Robert Laing (I'm not entirely sure how to pronounce his name)
and it sort of takes place in this high-rise building of 40 floors
outside of London.
And it's very much a self-sustaining building, and people technically don't have to leave
and it's "the would-be paradise turned dystopia, ruled by intimidation and violence,
and, as the residents organize themselves for war,
floor against floor, no one wants it to stop".
And now we're gonna jump to me in the future.
Okay, it's now a week later
and I have since seen the film and finished the book
also, I am coming to you from Norway.
I have some thoughts
and they are all written down on this piece of paper.
So, first of all, I just wanna talk through the premise a little bit
because when I filmed that earlier clip, I obviously hadn't seen the film yet or read the book.
There is this 40 floor high-rise that's been build.
There are 2000 people that have moved in.
And amongst that crowd, there's sort of the three main characters.
First of all, there is Dr. Robert Laing, who is newly single and he's moved in on what I think it's the 25th floor.
Then, there is Anthony Royal, who lives at the top floor
and he helped design the high-rise.
Finally, there is Richard Wilder, who lives on the second floor with his wife and kids.
He works either TV or film studios, and he's described as like a big strong man.
So, when everyone has moved in to what seems to be this idyllic building,
complaints start happening.
The lights start getting cut for certain floors, the garbage chutes are not working properly,
and what starts with complaints that aren't really resolved,
ends up causing a lot of animosity between different floors,
especially the lower floors, which are the cheaper apartments,
and the top floors, where sort of just rich and famous people live.
And very quickly, things start spiraling out of control.
So, first of all, let's talk a little bit about the book.
It is from the point of view of the three different characters I mentioned earlier.
None of these characters are very likeable.
It was an interesting experience reading the book directly after seeing the film.
Both the book and the film start with a little flash-forward
of basically a scene from the end.
I did think the book was quite a quick read,
it's only 250 pages.
I found the writing quite blunt.
I think the content is shocking enough
that the writing doesn't really need to emphasise it that much.
So just simply stating certain things does the trick
I would say that women definitely get the worst treatment and description in this book.
There's a lot of, sort of, uncomfortable physical descriptions of women in this book
and I've heard that J.G. Ballard was not the biggest fan of women.
What I did really like in the book over the film is that there was a lot more inner dialogue.
Sort of illustrating the thought patterns of "why aren't people cleaning up their trash?"
"why aren't they leaving the building?"
The mentality in the book is very much that they want to keep their issues to themselves.
Because they want to have the opportunity to "solve it" amongst themselves,
and they don't want the authorities to get involved.
So, when they leave the building, they still dress up very nicely and, like clean themselves
and they go to work and mostly sleep on their desks,
but no one really has a clue what's going on on the outside world, and they wanna keep it that way.
You can sort of figure that out from the film
but I think that in the book it's definitely more clearly illustrated.
Another thing that is a bit more clear in the book is that the people very quickly start forming clans
between different floors and they go on raiding parties.
It basically turns into a bit of a Lord of the Flies situation,
where they sort of make their own new rules and
they are so far removed from society in this building that they feel like
the rules of the normal world don't really apply to them anymore.
It gets pretty ridiculous and pretty disgusting very quickly.
Which is a good point to switch to the film.
Going into the film, I didn't really know what to expect.
I knew that Tom Hiddleston was in it
and they definitely made Dr. Laing, who's played by Tom Hiddleston, the main character of the film.
Also, there's a very interesting naked scene on the balcony that might be of interest to some of you.
He gets a lot more relationships with some of the different characters both friendly and other.
But I really noticed that you get to see a lot more of the female characters
and they have a lot more speaking parts,
and there's a lot more characters that have, sort of a developed character
and an actual, you know, name to them.
But it's also harder because you have to see all the abuse being played out on screen.
I feel that if you want to describe the aesthetic of this film,
it's very much a 1970's swinger party that's completely gone out of hand.
There were a lot of really gorgeous shots, lot of vibrant colours,
the sound design was really good.
Also, the soundtrack was great.
There's this one scene where there's like a string quartet playing an Abba song,
and later on, it gets remixed.
Probably one of my favourite bits.
And, overall, I think the film just has a vibe of "you want to look away, but you can't".
But sometimes you have to.
I don't want to give away any of the ending, but I absolutely loved it.
So, if you know what kind of endings I love, then you can probably predict what happens.
I do want to say that if you want to go see this film, be warned that tere's a lot of sexual abuse,
violence against both people and animals...
So, if you don't want to see that, maybe that's not the film for you.
But I think it's good to go in with a little bit of warning.
I did think it was a really good film.
I think it will definitely split opinions.
I feel like you sort of leave the cinema a different person, in a bit of a daze.
Okay, so that's everything that I've written down about both the book and the movie.
I'm definitely going to read some more J.G. Ballard.
If any of you have read the book or seen the film, I'm very curious to hear what you think.
I hope you enjoyed my double bill review.
And now, I'm going to leave you with a clip of Tom Hiddleston reading from the beginning of the book.
Chapter one. Critical mass.
Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog,
Doctor Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building
during the previous three months.
Now that everything had returned to normal, he was surprised that there had been no obvious beginning.
No point beyond which their lives had moved into a clearly more sinister dimension.
With its 40 floors and thousand apartments, its supermarket, its swimming pools, bank and junior school,
all in effect abandoned in the sky,
the high-rise offered more than enough opportunities for violence and confrontation.
Certainly, his own studio apartment on the 25th floor
was the last place Laing would have chosen as an early skirmish ground.
This overpriced sell slotted almost at random into the cliff face of the apartment building.
He had bought after his divorce, specifically for its peace, quiet and anonymity.
Curiously enough, despite all Laing's efforts to detach himself form his 2000 neighbours
and the regime of trivial disputes and irritations that provided that only corporate life,
it was here, if anywhere, that the first significant event had taken place.
On this balcony, where he now squatted beside the fire of telephone directories,
eating the roast hind quarters of the Alsatian
before setting off to his lecture at the Medical School.