On Architecture & Use of Space: Ben Wheatley’s HIGH-RISE vs. Nicholas Winding Refn’s THE NEON DEMON

Two films released this year showcase first and foremost a unique architecture in their set designs and an equally unique use of space between the characters and their surroundings. However, one film manages to make a note of its structural choices in the ultimate lesson it attempts to convey. The other film’s choices are as thoughtless as flipping the thin pages of a high-end fashion magazine.

The structural alignment of beams, floors, decks, and their vicinity from the parking lot in Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise is a physical manifestation of social hierarchy and the seperation of economic class. Many British stories, from E.M. Forsters’ Howard’s End and beyond have focused on the disparity and malevolence between the bourgeoisie and those subjected to a lower pedestal and even the sewers of the social strata. In J.G. Ballard’s novel, which Wheatley has, with his signature explosive cinematic style, translated into film, these socio-economic tales of the yesteryears are thrust forward into a quasi-post-apocalyptic world (it seems normal, but something is ominous about the air) where a series of high-rises dominate the landscape and stare down (literally the top of the buildings are tilted slightly so as to seem the building is “looking” downward) to the Earth with a shivering coldness.

The main protagonist Robert Laing, has an apartment somewhere in the middle of the building. He is perpetually dressed in shirt and tie, to the point where it almost seems that that is his skin (even during sex, he never takes his outfit off). Throughout the film, the architecture of the building gives an aesthetic dimension to its residence’s statuses in society. The top floors (which also host the Architect, the creator of the building) are huge, barren except for the luxurious minimalist furniture that sets itself more like a modern art piece than something to sit on. The clothing is similarly porcelain… clean whites, straight blacks. The lower floors are decorated the way we may decorate our own houses. Pots of plants, pictures kids drew magneted to the refrigerator, some simple paintings and family photos hanging from the walls. The residents clothes have more color and are knitted with designs. Every part of the look of the film is meant to portray the status of a member or group within the “society”. As the war between the lower and upper floors begins to bubble, we start to see foundations shake quite literally… the lobby of the hotel becomes a mess and the cement beams start to chip away. There’s fires in the hallways. One of the bourgeoisie individuals jumps off his balcony to crash and die in the parking lot. A kind of cheeky metaphor of the phrase “the higher you rise the harder you fall”, and quite deliberate in this case, for the parking lot is the only part of the complex where all residents of all floors are on the same level. There’s no turning up one’s nose there because there’s nowhere to go vertically.

High-Rise: 

Now on the complete opposite end of the platform, is Nicholas Winding Refn’s latest film, The Neon Demon, one which uses space and structure for nothing other than a “cool look”. While there is a clear metaphorical density to the design of Wheatley’s film, The Neon Demon’s use of architecture is more akin to million-dollar wrapping paper on an empty box. The resulting film is eerily similar to the smug, rotten, and morally defunct interiors of the top floors of the Wheatley’s High-Rise. The characters themselves function more like glass mannequins with no interior working parts. They are quite literally the subject of objectification and the male gaze, and even if the intent of this was to reveal the hollowness of Hollywood’s show-business, there was no attempt by Refn to examine it. Instead, the camera’s central job in this film is to move in lateral motions as the actresses, scantily clad, dolled up to the hilt, stare coldly at one another or into space. Sometimes there’s flickering neon lights. Much of the minimalist scene setting in Refn’s films has existed since Valhalla Rising, but this is the first time it seems like just time-filler. The actresses just take up space.

The Neon Demon:

 

Gone Girl

Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

By creating films based on timely novels, stories, and pop-culture phenomena, David Fincher almost guarantees his films will draw attention for a longer time than they really deserve. I mentioned a while ago how people really need to start “getting over” Fight Club because frankly, it’s not that great of a film (gasp! did he really just write those words with a straight face?!?), it is simply a pop-culture relic of counter-culture thought. That’s not to say it’s not good, it certainly is, but again Fincher’s movies hitting American culture’s popular artifacts right at the apex of their relevance helps propel them further than they could have gone.

Anyway, in this sense, imagine if Fincher decided to make The Social Network after people got tired of Facebook, or something better was about replace it? What if he decided to adapt Gone Girl say, 15 years after the book’s inception? Would we have payed so much attention to it? Would there be some time to digest the material and concentrate more on the pathology of marriage and it’s decay, its turbulence, and eventual reconciliation? This is all hypothetical, but it’s important to ask this because Gone Girl if anything is a representation of reactionary filmmaking to a controversial event. Gillian Flynn’s book is certainly not a traditional story, it does not have a comfortable trajectory. For popular fiction, this book rides against a tide of what people usually expect from this kind of novel. In the same way Oliver Stone’s W or that Ashton Kutcher-Steve Jobs movie hit theaters right after their subjects became a tidal wave conversation piece, in the same way Fincher’s Gone Girl treats Gillian Flynn’s novel as something that is supposed to make people react. It works because it’s topical… the book released recently, there was already buzz about it everywhere and due to the movie people who are adverse to ‘reading’ will be able to eagerly join in on the conversation.

Double-edged sword alert: Just like Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush piece and the Kutcher-Jobs film, because of Gone Girl‘s topicality, it completely forgoes saying anything about its own subject. There’s nothing insightful that Fincher adds to what Flynn said in the book, and its because the film is riding entirely on the book’s reputation. In the same way the Harry Potter films desperately clung onto J.K. Rowling’s reputation as a precedent and then continued replacing every ounce of magic in Rowling’s world with elaborate special effects, David Fincher replaces any conversation of marriage that Flynn wanted to address in the story with a simple “He’s an asshole/She’s a bitch” mind-game. That’s probably why the ending of the film felt a bit gimmicky because it never really ended with a bitter compromise, but just a bleak captive situation in which we feel sorry for Nick that he’s caught in a spider’s web… the more he struggles the harder it is to escape. I would like my readers to go watch John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence to gain an interesting perspective on marriage, and see how a “bitter compromising ending” is handled well in a film script… and trust me, the wife and husband’s tug-of-war is just as infuriating if not more so because it’s displayed as being rooted from a completely normal circumstance (alcoholism).

But let me save Fincher’s soul after I’ve picked it apart. The acting in this film is phenomenal. Rosamund Pike and Tyler Perry (yes, that Tyler Perry) steal this show, and interestingly enough for completely opposite reasons. Pike is incredible because she signals you to be uncomfortable right from the get go with the way she purposefully offers stilted dialogue delivery. The idea of making her read her lines to Affleck as if she was reading straight off of her character’s journal was inspired because you automatically sense something between the two isn’t normal or real despite their initial passionate love. Tyler Perry on the other hand is perfectly cast, and his character is the most likable… this is rather cheeky because Perry’s Madea character is one of the most infuriating people on the cinema screen. It’s very refreshing to see Perry play someone who maintains the enthusiasm with a completely laid-back unassuming attitude. I like to call these kinds of characters the “Gandalf characters” because when they show up, you’re always assured things are going to go right.

What Fincher succeeds with in his actors counters his lack of exploration of Flynn’s novel, but it should never replace it. The most important thing to remember about Gone Girl is that it is a story of marriage above everything else, and psychology, regardless of how haywire it becomes, is still rooted to the issue of being with someone else for the rest of your life and the mental fortitude that takes. In this sense, I wished Fincher thought about these things instead of lacing together a sleek and polished product to latch onto a novel’s coattails, but it’s still a movie worth watching… even though it’s not really a movie worth remembering.