Ben Wheatley is fast becoming one of the biggest and bravest names in British film industry, but it hasn’t always been that way. He started making a name for himself when he began directing the animated sketch show, Modern Toss, for Channel 4 back in 2008 and moving on The Wrong Door for BBC 3 in the same year. Things however changed the year after, when he released his first feature film, Down Terrace. I would just like to apologise at this point that I won’t be going into detail with this offering, as it is the only piece of Wheatley’s body of work that I haven’t seen!
Now while television is a brilliant medium, sometimes you just have to spread your wings and move onto something bigger, and in the case of Ben Wheatley, that meant going back to the big screen. His next cinematic offering was the 2011 film, Kill List. This horrendously dark, crime thriller has built up a huge cult following since its release; although some people, to this day are still unsure as to what actually happened in the film. Last year it even caused Dane Bowers to take to Twitter to express his confusion over the plot and was greeted with a barrage of abuse from fans of the movie. It received a lot more publicity and interest than his previous film, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a starting place if you want to get into his work. It isn’t a movie that you can put on in the background on a Saturday night with a couple of friends round, it needs your full attention. It is certainly a film to watch though, as it shows that some up and coming directors are so brave that they will make the film that they want to make, no matter what audiences think.
2013 was a relatively quiet year for Ben, in as much as he only released one movie. The movie in question is A Field in England. The plot follows a group of men during the English civil war and features a stellar line up of British actors including Reece Shearsmith and Julian Barratt. The film is mixture of a psychedelic, mushroom trip, war desertion, and alchemy story. It is by far Wheatley’s bravest film as it takes a step further into confusion that Kill List hinted at. At times it is a lot of style over substance, but fans of his work welcomed it with open arms.
This brings me onto the reason behind this article, and the announcement today that Wheatley is once again to step behind the camera with an adaptation of the J.G.Ballard novel, High-Rise. The story focusses a group of people who live within a high rise apartment building that have all of their needs catered for, so that their interaction with the outside world is kept to a minimum. The different people within the building end up forming their own social factions and this represents the floors they live on; so the lower floors are the lower classes and the upper floors represent the upper class. It seems like a perfect piece for Wheatley to work on, and with the announcement that Tom Hiddleston is set to star in it, it looks like to be another great addition to his body of work. Filming is set to start in June and in case you can’t wait till the release of High-Rise, fear not, as he is in the process of directing the first two episodes of the latest series of Doctor Who, so this will keep fans happy for a while. I for one am very interested in seeing how Wheatley brings his own unique style to the world of Doctor Who.
Jack blogs over here!