With warmth, sensitivity, and a sincere passion, director Clio Barnard delivers a realistic social drama that gradually engages you and lingers in your mind even after it ends.
"I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning," presented at the Cannes Film Festival, is a sweet and sad story about the dissatisfaction, disappointment, and insecurity of the younger generation.
The film follows five young people from Birmingham who grew up together but now, in their late 20s, face increasingly different paths. They sense a crisis approaching, while a tragedy seems to be silently growing from the inequality that is dividing them.
The screenplay, written by Enda Walsh, is based on the novel of the same name by Kieran Goddard. While the book is structured as a pentatonic of five consciousnesses, the film transforms this material into a tense and dynamic drama about their city, with distant echoes of Fellini’s “I Vitelloni.”
Five friends are introduced to a birthday party filled with alcohol, drugs and a vague sense that the fun times may be over. At the center is Rian, played by Joe Cole, the only one of the group who seems to have made it in life.
Using an inheritance from his late father, Rian has made a lot of money through online stock trading. While his friends live simply or in difficult conditions, he has bought a luxurious but cold and soulless apartment in London, where he is in a relationship with a beautiful woman whom his friends ironically call “Kate Middleton”. However, Rian does not feel truly happy there and can’t wait to return to the place where he grew up.
His success has shaken the group's balance and prompted insecurities and self-doubt among the others. Conor, played by Daryl McCormack, is the son of a builder who once took pride in his work. Inspired by Ryan's triumph, he has opened a construction company and convinced his friend to become the main investor. Conor is a hard worker and is expecting a father, but he seems clearly tired of the responsibilities.
Shiv, played by Lola Petticrew, is a smart and devoted mother of two young daughters. She is content with her life at home and married to Patrick, played by Anthony Boyle, who suffers deeply from the fact that, in his late 20s, he still works as a bike food delivery man.
Meanwhile, the biggest loser in the game is Oli, played by Jay Lycurgo, a messy, always smiling heroin dealer. But he seems to start to change when he adopts a stray dog on the street. With a strong sentimental feeling, Conor hires him as a construction worker.
Patrick talks about the time he was away from the group for university, which makes his current job as a delivery boy all the more humiliating. He railes against capitalism and the wealthy classes, accusing the system of exploiting hardworking people like him.
But Patrick is not the only one with an education. Conor has named his construction company “Dedalus,” after the architect of Greek mythology, as a tribute to his father. However, the name also brings to mind Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who flew too close to the sun. The film occasionally interrupts the narrative with time-lapse security footage, showing the “Dedalus” apartment block rising from a desolate site.
Construction and housing are at the center of the lives of the five characters. The film also opens up a familiar debate: is housing a social right, or a capital asset and credit guarantee for the wealthy?
The collapse of Birmingham's Brutalist towers, when the characters were children, was a spectacular and formative event for them. Oli says with delight that in the giant cloud of dust you could make out the face of Satan. It was a magnificent sight, exciting and disturbing at the same time.
Was it a new beginning? For Ryan and Conor, the answer seems to be yes. But Patrick is furious about their glitzy, gentrified construction project, which he sees as another profit-making scheme for the nouveau riche.
The film raises painful questions: what really drives Ryan? Does Shiv know anything about the hidden source of his unhappiness? What would have happened if Ryan hadn't gotten rich? Without his money, Conor wouldn't have started the construction company and wouldn't have believed so easily that profit could come as quickly as in the online trading casino.
The divisions between Rian and Patrick, as well as between Patrick and Shiv, probably wouldn't have opened up in the same way. But on the other hand, Oli's life wouldn't have taken a different direction either.
“I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” is a sad, sweet and heartfelt film, filled with clarity and hope. Clio Barnard manages to create a strong portrait of a generation facing broken dreams, social inequality and the desire to find a place in a world that seems to be changing faster than they themselves. /GazetaExpress/
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