OVERVIEW
There is a moment in everyone’s life when the dreams of youth and the world of possibilities give way to the (sometimes) harsh reality. Children, debts, ambitions, and the responsibilities of adult life take hold of our routines, and what once looked like the final destination grows more distant by the day. This is where the five friends of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning find themselves, reunited on the same Birmingham estate they grew up on for a 30th birthday. They are at different stages now, some more successful than others, and each of them senses that life is not headed where they once hoped, with affairs, the housing crisis, depression, and drugs in the way.
BACKGROUND
The film is based on a very personal 2024 novel by Keiran Goddard, built from five alternating voices with no proper plot to follow. Enda Walsh, the Irish playwright behind the adaptations of Small Things Like These in 2024 and Die My Love in 2025, took on the challenge of turning that monologue-filled book into a cohesive film, approaching director Clio Barnard with the idea before the novel was even published. Barnard had built her career up to that point filming the North of England, Bradford in particular, and she was not looking for a project when his email arrived. She connected with the material right away, especially the political intent and the exploration of the housing crisis woven into the characters. For the shoot, she cast real locals as background players, a method that has run through her work since The Arbor in 2010.
THE REVIEW
Instantly, from the party scene that opens the film, where each of them shows off a dance move and sing together songs they have probably sung countless times before, Barnard builds a connection with these friends that feels truthful and genuine. It reminded me of Stand by Me and Trainspotting (just far less raunchy), the way we are invited in as part of a fully connected group, one with the kind of closeness most people only dream about.
A lot of the runtime is spent simply observing them, hearing them tell jokes you don’t fully get yourself, or talking badly about other people. Slowly, we learn more about who they are and what each one is like. It is smart, for example, that we don’t need to see Conor being violent to learn that about him. His short temper is clear in the way Patrick and Rian have to pull him out of the party once they realize how much he has had to drink.
Both Oli and Conor get the short end of the stick in the adaptation, and they are by far the least interesting of the five. Oli’s struggle with addiction in particular feels disposable, and his development never fully convinces. As Conor, Daryl McCormack struggles to fit into the world of the film, and he comes off more like the outsider, a role that should belong only to Rian.
Much better explored are Patrick, Shiv, and Rian, all flawed people who make mistakes but are clearly trying to find their way to some kind of happiness. Patrick’s insecurity and Rian’s reckoning with his own unfulfillment are the film’s most intelligent plot points, and the rift between them gains an extra dimension from how much remorse and jealousy each has felt toward the other over the years.
The best scene, though, is the one where Patrick opens up about the housing crisis and for a moment preaches to Rian (and to the audience) about the state of the North of England. It is more dynamic than the Cannes equivalent in All of a Sudden, and yet, like that film, you forget you are being lectured while it informs you and leaves you plenty to think about.
By the end, you come out with a real understanding of the housing crisis in England, and you have met people you genuinely want to spend more time with.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What stayed with me in I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning was not the housing crisis and the argument Barnard makes around it, sharp as it is, but the five faces around that opening party. Barnard and the cast make you believe these people have known each other for thirty years, and by the end, you want thirty more. The film has real things to say about England, about who gets a future and who gets a gig-economy bike, and who gets to watch their dreams fall like lightning, all through people you would follow out of the theater. A modern-day Trainspotting, kinder but every bit as tragic.