HIGH-RISE: the villain is an oligarchy

Tom Hiddleston in HIGH-RISE. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Tom Hiddleston in HIGH-RISE. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

The dystopian sci-fi satire High-Rise, adapted from a J.G. Ballard novel, makes a droll and cynical comment on our species.  Taking place in the near future, the very wealthy live on the top floors of a self-contained high-rise, just above the middle class.  Human greed and jealousy creates scarcity for the residents – not Third World-type scarcity, but scarcity of amenities like swimming pool access and power brownouts.  Class competition erupts and a morbid descent into murderous chaos ensues.  We plunge into this complacent, and then hellish, world from the perspective of a young middle class striver (Tom Hiddleston).

The designer of the complex of high-rises (Jeremy Irons) lives in a luxurious penthouse with a staggeringly pastoral garden.  The character’s name is Royal, but he’s not the ruler.  (We actually come to wish that he were benignly in charge.)  And despite his trappings, Royal is not the omnipotent Bond-type villain.   The villain turns out instead to be an oligarchy of the One Percent, along with the darkest aspects of every character’s humanness.

Tom Hiddleston is fine, and the rest of the cast is solid.   The two standouts are Jeremy Irons as Royal and Sienna Miller, dressed in Carnaby Street retro, as a deliciously voracious man-hunter.  The wonderful Elisabeth Moss is wasted in a role where she just doesn’t have much to do.

I saw High-Rise at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). It opens in Bay Area theaters tomorrow.

The Words: the filmmakers think you’re idiots

The infuriating drama The Words does have a story to tell –  a young man finds success by publishing a found manuscript as his own, and then the old man who really wrote the novel shows up.  But no aspect of this story is left for the audience to figure out.

Take, for example, the initial writing of the novel.  We see, in flashback, that a man’s baby dies and his wife leaves; he then bangs out the novel in a paroxysm of angry grief. Thanks to the actors, we understand that’s what is happening.  But – just in case that we’re really dim – it is explained to us in voice over narration.   In case we don’t know how to feel about this, there is an overbearing score of soap opera music.  But wait – this story is a novel within a novel, so the actors playing the exterior story can explain it to us again.  Just to make sure that we get it.

The ham-handed storytelling and the overwrought music combine to make The Words corny.  The double and triple explanations of the story are just insulting to the audience.

One good thing about The Words –  Jeremy Irons’ performance is superb.

Margin Call: Will the greedy survive?

This is a taut drama about an investment bank facing the financial collapse of 2008.  In his first feature, writer-director J.C. Chandor (whose father worked on Wall Street) successfully creates a pressure cooker of a tale.

The story is compressed into a critical 24 hours in the life of the company.  It is set in darkened offices lit only with computer monitors that are gleaming with menacing graphs and spreadsheets.

Stanley Tucci is compelling as the bean counter who discovers an existential threat.  Kevin Spacey (also always good) is the corporate lifer who must clean up the mess.  Don’t overlook the depth of Paul Bettany’s performance as an amoral and personally empty corporate climber who is in it only for the sport and for the adrenaline, using his bonuses merely to keep score.  Finally, in Margin Call‘s most superb performance, Jeremy Irons oozes menacing confidence and power as the CEO who do anything to save his company.

Unfortunately, Chandor cannot create acting range for Simon Baker and Demi Moore, who are out of their depths among the otherwise fine cast.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DqFRsPrns]