The Tower Block Inferno With his latest movie, Ben Wheatley takes on JG Ballard science-fiction classic High-Rise. Ahead of the film’s screening at Glasgow Film Festival, the genre renegade discusses the craft of filmmaking and explains why blowing up buildings isn’t his bag
Ten of the Best at GFF Words: Jamie Dunn
Interview: Josh Slater-Williams
T
he Skinny’s chatting to director Ben Wheatley on the phone on the evening of the Glasgow Film Festival programme launch, with the Scottish premiere of his fifth feature, High-Rise, an adaptation of JG Ballard’s beloved 1975 novel, being among the screenings announced. It’s a dystopic tale of alienation, corruption and societal breakdown within the confines of a lavish apartment complex that starts off sleek and appealing, only to gradually transform into the kind of tower block that wouldn’t look out of place in the world of Judge Dredd. Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons, as grand architect Royal, topline an impressive cast for the British director’s first foray into bigger budget filmmaking. “What it gives you as a filmmaker is much more control,” Wheatley says of the scale change. “You can have much more control on very basic stuff like the colours of the rooms, how costumes relate to spaces, and how spaces relate to the overall design of the whole film. I think it’s a big difference.” Over in the States, a lot of debut filmmakers (or at least white male ones) are getting plucked from indie breakout hits to helm massive blockbusters for their second turn at the bat. Fellow Brit director Gareth Edwards has been a recipient of this fortune Monsters to Godzilla (and now an upcoming Star Wars spin-off), but Wheatley is one of this past decade’s emerging talents who’s been quite comfortable making steady progress through a string of ‘smaller’ features, from Down Terrace and Kill List to Sightseers and A Field in England. For Wheatley, this productivity is how he’s honing his filmmaking. “When you look at the people who are any good at it,” he says, “over time they’ve done a lot, they’ve directed a lot of things. Ridley Scott did thousands of adverts in the 60s/70s. John Ford had done a hundred [short] movies before he did his first feature. And the making of stuff, it helps with learning the craft of it. I think if I’d gone from a short or low-budget feature to a massive movie, then I’d have been learning on the job, which would have been a bit
terrifying. I shot my first film when I was [nearly] 40, so I’m not young, particularly, but I’ve spent time learning. Learning about how all the different departments work and how storyboarding works. I’ve done a lot of writing, I’ve worked a lot in television, and it’s always been slightly like baby steps just to make sure I knew what I was doing.” High-Rise is Wheatley’s most stylish film yet and the production design is key, with the film’s modernist architecture shaping a lot of its action and thematic concerns. “We wanted to create a space that reflected the script, in the respect that the apartments themselves are by Royal, and they impinge on the lives of the people inside,” Wheatley explains “They’re not blank, clinical boxes. When you see the flats with these weird concrete shapes inside them, you feel like the building itself is stopping, somehow, the people inside the rooms making their own homes, and that was important. But then we also dealt with the period stuff – we wanted to make and create a kind of alternate 70s.” After watching High-Rise, this writer was reminded of the late Ken Russell when it came to the film’s disorientating foray into darkness. When we bring the comparison up, Wheatley expresses admiration: “I’ve certainly been appreciating the Ken Russell stuff a lot over the last few years, rewatching it. I’m a massive fan of The Devils. It’s a spectacular movie and one of the best British films made, if not one of the best films made. For me, it’s kind of the holy trinity of him and [Nicolas] Roeg and [John] Boorman, but they seem to be quite underappreciated for some reason. I don’t know why. I mean, when you see something like Point Blank... incredible film, and from someone who was very young at the time. I’ve been rewatching that quite a lot and it’s very modern, it doesn’t really date. And it’s interesting if you watch Point Blank and then watch The Revenant – basically the same movie – and see how Boorman handled that material in the 60s, in a much more incredibly clear way, and a more modern way, a sophisticated understanding of revenge and where it leads you to.”
Wheatley’s holy trinity of Brit filmmakers certainly came under fire from censors at the time, as did the last major Ballard adaptation, David Cronenberg’s 1996 take on Crash. “If Crash came out tomorrow,” Wheatley says, “no one would bat an eyelid. It’s part of the general reclassification of cinema. I bought a copy of The Terminator the other day and it’s a 15 now. And I think most movies that were 18 from the 80s would be 15s now.”
“ If Crash came out tomorrow, no one would bat an eyelid" Ben Wheatley
As we wrap up, we’re given a little insight into how films of the past have inspired Wheatley’s next film, Free Fire, a 70s Boston-set action thriller starring Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer: “I’d seen a lot of big Hollywood stuff and a lot of buildings blowing up. Incredible action sequences that should have been blowing me away, and I was watching them thinking, I just don’t care. I don’t understand why I don’t care about any of this stuff. It’s technically incredible, but it’s really boring and I don’t know why. And I kinda figured that maybe there’s something about the human scale of it. And I thought, what did I used to like in action films? I wanted to get back to that, really. To stuff where it was people fighting each other in a very intimate, close space. I think when the body count gets too high, it just gets silly, doesn’t it?” And with that, you can probably dash any hopes you might have of a Wheatley-helmed Marvel movie. High-Rise Scottish premiere at Glasgow Film Festival. 18 Feb. Followed by a Q&A with Wheatley
Arabian Nights Miguel Gomes’ last film was the spellbinding Tabu, and word is he works similar magic with this sly, three-part remix of Scheherezade’s classic fairy tales. Vol 1, 22&23 Feb; Vol 2, 24&25 Feb; Vol 3, 25&26 Feb The Club This darkly comic study in guilt and punishment from Pablo Larraín (Tony Manero, No) sounds like a sinister twist on Father Ted, centring on a household of disgraced priests who’ve been banished to a perennially overcast coastal village. 18&19 Feb Évolution This strange and mysterious film from Lucile Hadzihalilovic recalls early David Cronenberg in the way it blends sci-fi and body horror to hairraising effect. Not to be missed, especially as Hadzihalilovic will be around for a Q&A after the screening. 20&21 Feb Goodnight Mommy So, your loving mum returns home following cosmetic surgery with her face swaddled in bandages – just how sure can you be that this woman really is your mother? Twin boys find themselves in that exact situation in this devilish psychological horror from Austria. 19&21 Feb I Am Belfast This bittersweet paean to his hometown is Mark Cousins’ best essay film yet. It’s also his most beautiful, with painterly visuals courtesy of master cinematographer Christopher Doyle. 23&28 Feb James White All you really need to know about this dreamlike character study centred on a mother and son is that it’s from Borderline Films, the filmmaking collective behind such movies as Martha Marcy May Marlene, Simon Killer and Afterschool. Everything they produce is unmissable. 19&20 Feb Julien Duvivier retrospective Like his fellow practitioner of ‘poetic realism’, Julien Duvivier got a bit of a kicking from the Cahiers du Cinéma crowd of Godard, Truffaut et al. But the soon-to-be New Wave directors were wrong. Duvivier’s films are ripe for rediscovery, so don’t miss GFF’s screenings of three of his rarely-seen pictures. 18, 21 & 23 Feb Mustang Five orphaned sisters find themselves under lock and key as their strict guardians try to marry them off one by one.This Turkish festival hit has been described as ‘a prison movie with a spiky sense of humor,’ and we hear the performances are as ebullient as the subject matter is grave. 27&28 Feb The Pearl Button Nostalgia for the Light, the previous film from Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán, drew a link between astronomy and the ongoing search for those murdered during Pinochet’s reign. In this equally mesmerising film he investigates the significance of water on his nation’s tragic history. 22&23 Feb Speed Sisters This lively doc follows five Palestinian women as they vie to be crowned the fastest broad on the West Bank. Amber Fares’ film is that rare beast, a documentary set in the Middle East that’s both political and playful. 24 Feb Glasgow Film Festival runs 17-28 Feb
February 2016
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Feature
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