With warmth and heartfelt passion, and a quintet of outstanding performances from young actors shot in looming closeup for much of the time, Clio Barnard has created an absorbing and moving social-realist picture. It is a film whose mix of poignancy, defiance, and contaminated euphoria stayed with me hours after the closing credits.
Plot Overview
The film follows five young people from Birmingham who grew up together, now reaching the end of their 20s and sensing a looming crisis. They are on the verge of a tragedy that grows from within their increasing disparity. Adapted by screenwriter Enda Walsh from Kieran Goddard's novel, the story transforms a static pentaptych of five consciousnesses into a fraught and dynamic hometown drama with echoes of Fellini's I Vitelloni.
We meet the five friends at a boozy, weed-and-coke-fueled birthday party where good times are laced with a suspicion that the party is over. First among equals is Rian (Joe Cole), who made a fortune dealing stock warrants online using an inheritance. While his mates live modestly or in squalor, Rian buys a chilly designer flat in London and dates a woman they nickname “Kate Middleton.” Yet he isn't happy and gladly returns to his home turf.
Character Dynamics
Rian's success sends ripples of unease through the group. Conor (Daryl McCormack), a builder's son, is inspired to start a construction firm with Rian as chief investor. He is hardworking and an expectant father but careworn by responsibility. Shiv (Lola Petticrew) is a smart, caring mother of two, content with stay-at-home life, married to Patrick (Anthony Boyle), who is deeply depressed working as a food delivery cyclist in his late 20s. Oli (Jay Lycurgo) is a goofy slacker who deals heroin but is inspired to change after adopting a stray dog; Conor sentimentally hires him as a site worker.
Patrick rants about capitalism exploiting workers, but he isn't the only one with an education. Conor names his firm “Dedalus” after the Greek myth architect, a tribute to his father, though Barnard may intend audiences to recall Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. The action is interspersed with time-lapse security footage of the Dedalus apartment block rising from wasteground.
Themes
The film suggests building and housing are a mythic center to their lives, reviving a debate: is housing a social right or a maturing capital asset? The demolition of Birmingham's brutalist tower blocks when they were kids was a spectacular, formative event. Oli dreamily says Satan's face was visible in the dust cloud; it was awe-inspiring, exciting, unsettling. Was it a new beginning? For Rian and Conor, yes, but Patrick is furious that their gentrified venture is another scheme for the newly rich.
What drives Rian? Does Shiv know something about his secret unhappiness? What if Rian hadn't gotten rich? Conor wouldn't have started his firm, and Rian wouldn't have encouraged him to believe it was as easily profitable as online trading. The divisions between them might not have opened up, but then Oli's life wouldn't have turned around either.
This is a sad, sweet film, finally laced with sobriety and hope. I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning screened at the Cannes film festival.
