THE STORY – On the cusp of turning 30, Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli and Conor, five childhood friends from the same estate, are suddenly forced to confront a life where their hopes and dreams haven’t materialized. They are all walking the high wire. But which one will fall?
THE CAST – Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack & Lola Petticrew
THE TEAM – Clio Barnard (Director) & Enda Walsh (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 109 Minutes
There’s nothing quite as restorative as a great night out with friends. As social, community-based creatures, we humans need companionship, and sometimes the best and easiest way to realign ourselves if we’re feeling off is to surround ourselves with people that we love and who love us back in return. “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” has that effect in cinematic form, bonding viewers to the central group of friends quickly and deeply. While its ultimate emotional impact isn’t quite what it’s clearly aiming for, it’s a charming, powerful story of changing dynamics amongst close pals and how a group’s balance can be disturbed and altered, with a bit of socioeconomic commentary thrown in for good measure.
Based on Keiran Goddard’s hit book of the same name, director Clio Barnard’s film adaptation centers around a quintet of friends in their late 20s who all grew up together in Birmingham, England. Patrick (Anthony Boyle) and Shiv (Lola Petticrew) are a couple with two young daughters. Rian (Joe Cole) is the one who made it out, escaping their working class upbringing with a successful career in business. Oli (Jay Lycurgo), on the other hand, is a drug dealer and user. And Conor (Daryl McCormack) is a builder, managing a development project in which Rian has invested.
The film smartly opens with a party for Oli’s 30th birthday. Barnard expertly introduces each character in a way that feels totally organic to the story but also marks them specifically in viewers’ minds. Seeing them all interact so joyously in celebration is an excellent way to attach us to these five folks, showing them all at their peak exuberance. We see them dancing, sharing inside jokes, and ribbing each other. And amazingly, it feels like we’ve been invited to the party too, connecting with the fab five and wanting to see them advance their lives for the better across the course of the film. In the morning-after sequence that follows, their individual paths are clearly established, showing that they lead lives that are distinct in the details but aligned in spirit, in the way that a shared childhood can do. They also all have an endearing quality that makes them impossible to not root for.
The talented actors all make Barnard’s mission to portray the characters as whole human beings easier. If one actor stands out the most out of the five, it’s Cole as the newly-wealthy Rian. He’s excellent as the personification of the phrase “money can’t buy happiness.” Even though he seems to have it all in the eyes of his less-well-off friends, Cole’s haunted face tells a different story. Boyle’s Patrick is exuberant and sympathetic without being pitiable. He has a habit of expounding on socialist theory about societal inequality, showing his financial situation is not at all owing to a lack of smarts. His firebrand monologues have a habit of sounding a bit didactic in a film that doesn’t otherwise chase this tone, but Boyle delivers them with a passion that makes them feel organic (and we’ve all had to listen to a friend talk on and on about their political beliefs even when not asked, so it’s not totally out of place). As his partner Shiv, Petticrew is beyond winning, making it easy to see why all four of the men are so clearly and plainly captivated by her. McCormack excels as Conor, the character with the most dramatic storyline. He has a drinking problem, and McCormack smartly avoids the typical patterns that too many actors fall into when playing drunk. And Lycurgo brings an easy charm to Oli, assuring that, even though his situation starts in a dire place at the film’s beginning, he has a good head on his shoulders and, if he wants it, a promising future,
Clocking in at under two hours, the film has a lot of proverbial plates to successfully spin in its relatively condensed runtime. This means Enda Walsh’s screenplay makes some rather hasty dramatic choices as developments and revelations occur quite quickly. Because of this acceleration, some of the arguments and conflicts come across as somewhat cliched, but the characters are so well established that this never threatens the audience’s investment. The movements of the plot still feel earned and truthful, although the film builds what would be expected to be an overwhelmingly emotional conclusion that never quite tips over into being profoundly moving. But the story still feels complete by the end, even if it wraps up almost too tidily. Smartly, in order to keep the film grounded in the realistic world of the characters, Barnard keeps her camera close to them, never getting overly grand in her cinematic choices. Her restraint as a director balances out the screenplay’s occasionally melodramatic tendencies.
“I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” is an effective contemporary social drama, using its characters to show how people of similar backgrounds can go on completely differing life journeys, due to circumstances both in and out of their control. Except for Patrick’s proclamations, the screenplay doesn’t aggressively underline its exploration of the exploitation of the working class, showing through story rather than diatribe how, in today’s society, the rich only get richer the more that the poor suffer. The film examines through its story the delicate balance between prosperity and poverty, between stability and shakiness, telling its tale with compassion and an entertaining spirit of humane togetherness.
