Ballard’s chilling prose won’t be re-created here, but in considering the new film adaptation directed by Ben Wheatley, the original context is worth revisiting. High-Rise was published in 1975, against the backdrop of a Britain stumbling into economic crisis. Witnessing war as a child, training in medicine, and thereafter writing from a rather bloodless middle-class patch of suburbia, Ballard spun tales of urban life that continue to be uncomfortably visceral. Borges or Calvino have their fair share of admirers, but to borrow an adjective more frequently applied to buildings, Ballard is the most iconic of literary figures-especially for readers of a concrete-expansion-joint persuasion. Courtesy Magnolia Picturesįor architects, if I may generalize an entire professional community, there are few novelists as cultishly beloved as J.G. The Brutalist high-rises in Ben Wheatley’s new film were inspired in part by Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick and Balfron towers in London.
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