{"id":497097,"date":"2026-05-22T07:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T07:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/497097\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T07:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T07:52:07","slug":"i-see-buildings-fall-like-lightning-review-a-clunky-british-weepie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/497097\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning’ Review: A Clunky British Weepie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe group of lads at the center of Clio Barnard<\/a>\u2019s \u201cI See Buildings Fall Like Lightning<\/a>\u201d dance their way through addiction, housing precarity, class tensions and good old romantic betrayal. In theory, the British director\u2019s fifth feature \u2014 premiered in Directors\u2019 Fortnight at Cannes \u2014 is a film of big, bubbling emotions and anti-capitalist rage. In execution, it\u2019s a choppy outline of five working-class lives in the U.K. cobbled together by gloopy sentimentality. The ingredients for a pounding kitchen-sink melodrama are here, but nothing really matches the scalding imagery evoked by the title \u2014 and scattered throughout via archival footage of the dozens of high-rise housing towers demolished in Birmingham, where the film is set, since the turn of the century.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAdapted from the novel of the same name by Kieran Goddard, the script by Enda Walsh (\u201cSmall Things Like These\u201d) shifts between five characters, a clan of childhood besties in their thirties still clinging to their hard-partying ways. Patrick (Anthony Boyle), a politically opinionated food delivery courier, lives with his high school sweetheart-now-wife, Shiv (Lola Petticrew<\/a>) and their two young daughters in an inner-city estate. Their neighbours include Oli (Jay Lycurgo<\/a>), a loveable goofball who deals heroin to make ends meet, and Conor (Daryl McCormack<\/a>), whose struggles with alcohol intensify as his pregnant wife Sophie (Lucie Shorthouse) nears her due date. <\/p>\n

\n\tConor is also managing the construction of a new high-rise, following in the footsteps of his entrepreneur father in the hopes that the project will change his family\u2019s financial situation. He\u2019s receiving crucial investment money from Rian (Joe Cole<\/a>), the only member of the group who has managed to break out of Birmingham. Living in a sterile condo in London after scoring big-time with online stock warrants, Rian feels out of touch with his posh new surroundings.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe soundtrack is a warm bath of nostalgia (The Paragons, The Proclaimers) paired with groovy techno tracks and a propulsive electronic score by Barnard\u2019s regular collaborator Harry Escott. A ramshackle opening sequence at Oli\u2019s 30th birthday almost feels like a musical number thanks to cinematographer Simon Tindall\u2019s gliding, rhythmic camerawork, establishing at once the friends\u2019 joyous camaraderie and boozy loss of control.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a tenderness to the film that aligns it with Barnard\u2019s most recent drama \u201cAli & Ava\u201d (also a Directors\u2019 Fortnight selection, in 2021) as opposed to the more downbeat \u201cThe Selfish Giant\u201d (2013) and \u201cDark River\u201d (2017). In any case, \u201cI See Buildings\u201d continues the character-driven social-realist agenda that runs through her BAFTA-nominated body of work, beginning with her debut feature \u201cThe Arbor\u201d \u2014 an experimental documentary whose spirit of innovation Barnard has largely abandoned for more straightforward dramas that give human faces to the various systemic injustices in her homeland. Because of its more ambitious scope and ensemble cast of professional actors, her latest has a fair shot at theatrical play outside the U.K.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless, it might have worked better in serialized form. The performances give life to its characters, but the script is laughably heavy-handed in the way it stakes out the themes and rushes through character arcs. One minute, Oli is passing out at lunch from excessive drug use, the next he\u2019s changed by a run-in with the small daughter of one of his clients, and adopts a dog that puts his life back on track. We\u2019re constantly reminded of Conor\u2019s alcohol abuse by the mounting number of empty bottles in his office, and Rian\u2019s short-lived relationship with a Kate Middleton lookalike seems destined to fail from their first dating-app meetup.<\/p>\n

\n\tTensions between Rian and Patrick flare when Rian drunkenly mentions a brief fling with Shiv, though the film\u2019s clunky edit, which gives little room for the performances to breathe and play out organically within their contexts, makes these frictions feel stilted and juvenile. Barnard gives bleak scenarios a stirring kind of hopefulness, an effect achieved by the cast\u2019s breezy chemistry, but the film as a whole slumps in weird tonal directions that give its tragedies and resolutions a muted, shrugging quality \u2014 all the odder because the intention is so evidently to make us weep and smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The group of lads at the center of Clio Barnard\u2019s \u201cI See Buildings Fall Like Lightning\u201d dance their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[11519,216411,35600,18,117,216412,19,17,216413,3360,97007,327],"class_list":["post-497097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-clio-barnard","tag-daryl-mccormack","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-i-see-buildings-fall-like-lightning","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jay-lycurgo","tag-joe-cole","tag-lola-petticrew","tag-movies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116617146940195364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}