介绍:
Written by Li Shiyu and read by Li Ningjing, this is a small segment from the weekly literary program: Ink&Quill.
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To say I was disappointed after watching British director Ben Wheatley's film "High-Rise" would be an understatement. Adopted from the J.G. Ballard's novel of the same name, this dystopian drama was said to be "the most talked-about film of the summer" in 2016. A hopeless sci-fi buff, naturally I had tremendously high expectations for the adaptation.
However, despite getting some of the most sophisticated stars in British film on board, the film turned out to be a chaotic, disengaging, and incoherent mess. To be honest, it fails to leave me with any impression, except for Luke Evans' not-so-convincing loutish demeanor and Tom Hiddleston's six-pack.
The moment I turned off my laptop, I told myself that I would never watch or read anything related to J.G. Ballard again, regardless of his reputation. But now, I am glad that I didn't let my preconceived attitude get in the way.
The last installment of Ballard's "urban disaster" trilogy, the novel "High-Rise" centers on the tenants of a very unusual apartment block in London, where the rich are entrenched on the upper floors whereas the less well-off reside below. This ultra-modern forty-storied skyscraper is well equipped, playing host to all kinds of facilities, such as a junior school and a supermarket. To a certain extent, this "vertical city" is a self-sufficient, self-contained realm, "operating to its own rhythms".
All is well until things start to take an ominous, dark turn. In the very beginning, there are some trivial disputes and mild irritations between tenants, such as a wine bottle falling from above and bursting across a resident's entire balcony; or someone complaining that children from the lower-levels are urinating in the 35th-floor swimming pool. Then, soon enough, heated bickering and personal rivalries appear. Like "a Pandora's box whose thousand lids (are) one by one inwardly opening", the violence and disorder escalate, as the drunken rage and collective insanity contaminate the entire building like "an almost palpable miasma".
During the course of three short months, the once-organized high-rise becomes an anarchic playground dominated by the law of the jungle. As the story proceeds, we, as readers, have witnessed the collapse of social structure inside the building, falling from a modern civilization to tribalism and savagery.
I have no intention of sharing with you any of the vicious, gruesome details in the book, as the author himself had already depicted the degradation of humanity in a vivid and unemotional manner. For me, the most appalling part of the novel is not the neurotic brutality that the residents display, but their unified refusal to leave the building and their nonchalance toward their exterior reality. Everyone becomes a prisoner. In the eyes of J.G.Ballard, the high-rise becomes a "huge, aggressive malefactor" who "inflict(s) every conceivable hostility" upon its habitants and encourages them to unleash all their repressed instincts.
As many run amok in this Alcatraz-alike high-rise, Dr Robert Laing, a psychologist who moves into the middle of the block, serves as something of a spectator, watching the anarchy build around him. When most of his male counterparts come to their destined doom, Laing's "acquiescent, restrained" psyche helps him survive all the turbulence. By the end of the novel, it seems that everything returns to normal and a semblance of order has been restored. Yet when we follow Laing's gaze, four hundred yards away, another skyscraper is repeating the same fate.
Tom Hiddleston, who plays Dr Laing in the movie, once said though four decades have passed since the story was published, its message still speaks to the current zeitgeist: "…there's something in the way our society is structured - which will always be relevant until it changes - which is people feel a justified anger about being asked to stay in their lane."
Yes, there are abundant class conflicts in the book. But J.G. Ballard's "High-Rise" is far from a simple condemnation of the class system. Rather, it is a darker, eerier version of "Lord of the Flies" that tears away fig leaf off modern society and shows to us how fragile everything is.
