Movies about male friendship are particularly rare, especially working-class ones. In I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, director Clio Barnard and screenwriter Enda Walsh (adapting Kieran Goddard’s novel) have created something decidedly absent from a lot of contemporary cinema. On the cusp of turning 30, five childhood friends from the same estate in Birmingham – Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli and Conor – find themselves stalling in life and with a looming sense of crisis. It’s a compelling meditation on friendship, class inequality and how the problems of unaffordable housing impact every facet of life in the 2020s.
Barnard is known for her blend of fiction and documentary style, and for shining a light on working-class lives, which so much of British cinema shies away from, so it’s already a triumph for originality. The cast is wonderful and believable, and for a film with so many main characters, it never feels crowded: every one of them earns their place.
Peaky Blinders’ Joe Cole is brilliant as Rian, the one who’s done well for himself, living and working in Canary Wharf and dating a very Kate Middleton-esque girlfriend. Patrick and Shiv (Anthony Boyle and Lola Petticrew) are the couple who have lasted since school, have gone on to have kids, and are striving to keep their heads above water. Conor (Daryl McCormack) is expecting a baby with his wife, and works on a building site after persuading Rian to be the chief investor. Meanwhile, Oli (Jay Lycurgo) is a slacker/drug dealer who’s inspired to change his ways after adopting a stray dog called Lola (note: the relationship between Oli and Lola is one of the most heartwarming relationships in any film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival).
The significance of the jobs the men have undertaken is pivotal to the plot. Patrick’s bicycle delivery job seems to be the only one available to him, occasionally earning him as little as £43 a day, and his panic at not being able to keep his family afloat feels palpably real. Rion’s job in Canary Wharf might make him “more money in a week than my father earned in his entire lifetime,” but it’s hollow, unfulfilling work. Meanwhile, Conor has taken over the production of a block of luxury flats after his dad’s death. Having two of our leads working as builders constructing the exact type of homes they’d never afford to live in lends the film a particularly poignant tone, the passage of time marked by time-lapse CCTV footage of the building as it gains height, brick by brick.
Barnard casts the issue of housing as intrinsic to most of the characters’ problems, and the debate as to whether housing is a social right or an earned capital asset is central to its premise. Wisely, having more money is not seen as the be-all and end-all to solving this issue: Rion is exceptionally well off, having dropped £1.5 million on a soulless Canary Wharf penthouse, but the problem is a cultural one, and social mobility isn’t afforded to all the characters in equal measure.
It’s a shrewd point that Barnard makes in the most heartbreaking way imaginable. Evidently, the one thing that saves the characters is the love they share for the community they grew up in, so it’s all the more upsetting that such communities are being destroyed by the exact problems the film identifies. It suggests the chance for similar friendship groups to form is eternally under threat.
For me, the one place the film falters is a scene in a hotel bathroom where the film’s main message is shoehorned in, where Patrick narrowly avoids breaking the fourth wall to tell the audience exactly what the movie’s about. For a film that was so reliant on subtext until this point, it feels like an unnecessary move, more showing than telling. The film would make its point perfectly adequately with this scene lifted out.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning will engender all kinds of reactions, from bouts of laughter to floods of tears. Hopefully, it will engender some much-needed conversations too, about the impact of the housing crisis on everyone’s lives, rich and poor, and how we can really call ourselves a society if such a major issue is continually sidelined. A beautiful piece of cinema and one of the best of the fest. Barnard and her team have created something extraordinary.
★★★★★
In cinemas soon / Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack, Lola Petticrew, Michael Horton / Dir: Clio Barnard / BBC Film, BFI, Curzon
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