I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning: a powerful portrait of working-class lives under pressure

REVIEW: I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning: CineCity film

11th November 2026.

Award-winning Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning begins with the warmth and familiarity of long-standing friendship. Five childhood friends, still closely connected to one another, and their Birmingham roots, are now in adulthood and mostly still living in the city, confronting the gap between the lives they imagined and the lives they have actually managed to build. But as the film unfolds, the cracks begin to show. Financial pressures, secrets, relationship breakdowns and unfulfilled ambitions emerge, while the demolition of three Birmingham tower blocks provides an unsettling visual metaphor for lives and structures coming apart.

Adapted from Keiran Goddard’s novel of the same name (writer, poet and social theorist), with a screenplay by Irish playwright Enda Walsh, this is a film that has a great deal to say about class, masculinity, money, mental health and the increasingly precarious business of just getting by.

The five friends have taken different paths. Rian has apparently made good, leaving Birmingham to work in the City in London. Others remain closer to home, trying to make relationships, work and family life function. There is a builder Conor whose business, Daedalus, carries an interesting mythological resonance. Daedalus was the ingenious craftsman who created the labyrinth and fashioned wings for himself and his son Icarus. It is a name that suggests ambition, ingenuity and the possibility of escape, but also the dangers of overreaching, as we sadly see the aftermath of this later in the film.

The film gradually reveals how fragile these apparently established lives have become. The man who has achieved financial success struggles to communicate with his upper-class girlfriend Emma, while the builder conceals the extent of his huge financial difficulties from his wife. Rather than share their fears, key male characters retreat into drink, avoidance and increasingly destructive behaviour. There is a particularly recognisable strain of masculinity here: men who love their families and friends, but have never quite learnt how to articulate vulnerability or ask for help. They simply do not have the words to describe what they are experiencing.

Another of the characters, Patrick, is an intelligent, community-minded left-winger who has been to university, works hard for relatively little money in the gig economy and believes in the value of family and collective responsibility. He is perhaps the character whose aspirations feel most familiar to anyone who has tried to make a decent living while holding on to their principles. The film is not suggesting that everyone has made the wrong choices. It simply asks what happens when the choices available to people become increasingly constrained.

The film assembles actors Anthony Boyle as Patrick, Joe Cole as Rian, Jay Lycurgo as Oli the charming dealer trying to go straight, talented Irish performers Daryl McCormack as Conor, and Lola Petticrew as Shiv brings considerable depth to the group, with a convincing chemistry that makes their shared history feel real. Petticrew, recently seen in Channel 4’s Trespasses, is particularly compelling, as is her on-screen husband Boyle. The performances are naturalistic and often understated, allowing tensions to surface through small gestures and silences rather than dramatic declarations.

Although this is a contemporary story, it has something of the rawness of the British kitchen-sink tradition. I was reminded of 1950s and ‘60s British films such as Up the Junction and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: stories in which ordinary people are caught between their desires, their circumstances and the social structures surrounding them, and the ensuing quiet frustration arising from this.

The film’s treatment of friendship is complicated. The gang have known one another since childhood, but familiarity does not necessarily mean understanding. There is affection, loyalty, humour and a shared sense of belonging, but also jealousy, resentment and secrets. Their relationships are tested by the very pressures that might be expected to bring them closer together. The result is a portrait of solidarity that is neither sentimental nor entirely reassuring, and brings a stark loneliness at times to the ensemble.

Music plays a significant part in shaping the film’s atmosphere. The soundtrack ranges widely, from The Streets, with their Birmingham connections, to Steve Harley’s Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), The Paragons’ The Tide Is High, Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren, UB40’s Kingston Town and The Proclaimers. There are also contributions from Joy Orbison, Bicep, Asian Dub Foundation and Donal Lunny and Frank Hart, whose Building Up and Tearing England Down is an especially intriguing inclusion. The music moves between nostalgia, exuberance and melancholy, giving the film a wider cultural texture.

There are literary and political references, too. A quotation from Pablo Neruda’s La Barcarola Termina sits alongside an extract from Capitalism: A Ghost Story by female Indian writer Arundhati Roy. These are not incidental decorations. They help place the personal difficulties of the characters within a much larger conversation about inequality, power and the economic post-capitalist forces shaping everyday life.

The film’s title takes on increasing significance as the tower blocks (of the title) disappear. The demolition of three towering blocks of high-rise flats features repeatedly in the film. The group mention them too. What does this signify? Buildings are demolished, but what replaces them? What happens to the communities and memories attached to those places? The demolition becomes a metaphor for the erosion of security and the loss of a familiar world. The film is also asking whether friendship, family and community can survive when the material foundations of people’s lives are so unstable.

Its ending offers a moment of emotional release, with a dancefloor sequence that suggests the possibility of reconciliation. Yet it is not a neat resolution. The characters may find their way back towards one another, but the larger questions remain. The towers have gone. The economic pressures have not. Their loss is real.

The performances in this film were nothing short of excellent. Yet, I found this a difficult film to watch. As someone from a working-class background, I recognised too much of the relentless effort involved in trying to keep life on track. Driving home afterwards, I felt distinctly shaken. The film’s portrayal of people who are working hard, trying to do the right thing and still struggling to get ahead can feel uncomfortably close to home in this unforgiving late-stage capitalist paradigm.

There are themes of loneliness, financial insecurity, jealousy, mental health and * trigger warning, suicide, that may make it particularly difficult viewing for anyone already feeling low. This is not a criticism of the film. Its refusal to soften the reality of its characters’ circumstances is part of its strength. It is a ‘feel-bad’ film in the tradition of Ken Loach, not because it lacks warmth or humanity, but because it refuses to offer easy comfort.

For all its bleakness, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is also a love letter to Birmingham, to working-class friendship and to the stubborn hope that things might somehow turn out differently. It captures the humour, affection and shared histories that bind people together, while acknowledging how easily those bonds can be strained by the pressures of modern life.

It is a powerful, unvarnished film, beautifully performed and often heartbreaking. Not an easy evening at the cinema, perhaps, but a film that stays with you long after you leave.

Details

CINECITY THE BRIGHTON FILM FESTIVAL – ADVENTURES IN WORLD CINEMA

Dates: Films, talks and special events from 6-15 NOV 2026.

Venue: Screenings across Brighton

Tickets: Book online direct from each venue – details on Cinecity website.