High Life

I really enjoyed this film, but I cannot imagine the average moviegoer would care too much for it. If you enjoy arthouse films, then you should probably give this a shot- it has some wonderfully meditative themes, some great performances, and a completely original story. But if you only go to the movies to see the latest Marvel flick, I can almost guarantee you'll think this movie weird and probably a little messed up.

"High Life" is obsessed with sex in space, or the lack thereof. A bunch of convicts find themselves in a new sort of prison in a spaceship far from Earth. A mother and wife who murdered her family becomes a mad doctor obsessed with procreation and mating with another man. Actually, nobody has consensual sex, which seems to be banned for whatever reason, aboard the craft. Instead, they masturbate a lot, including for the doctor's collection of sperm in her ongoing in vitro fertilization experiments. Otherwise, there's celibacy and rape. There's a room onboard specifically designated for onanism, with one scene featuring the doctor straddling a dildo chair.

Images of space stand in as symbolic of a womb. There's a focus on fluids--semen, blood, water and such. Plus, there's the fertility of the garden. The picture begins with the reminder of the result of sex by way of scenes of an infant and her father. The backstory is filled in non-linearly later on, including that the rocketship is accelerating towards a black hole. There's no need to explain what the metaphor of that is. Hardly a need for the movie in general, either, which doesn't seem as interesting to me as it apparently does to some critics. The slow pacing and emptiness of space here merely seems to suggest a lack of anything compelling to move towards or to fill it with.

And the seemingly-random images transmitted from Earth remain baffling to me, including the early clip from "In the Land of the Head Hunters" (1914), although I don't recall any horses being in that film, which is why I first thought it was from some Thomas H. Ince silent Western. Regardless, at least, that offered some brief, as they say, "mental masturbation."

Grab your specimen jar and a bag of popcorn, because you're in for one heck of a ride. Does it make sense? Well, no. Is it slow moving and tedious. Yeah, but it.has it's moments. Would I recommend it. Sure knock yourself out! It's like a one night stand that you'll live to regret, but seemed a good idea at the time. There may be some hidden messages, so try to stay awake! Is there hidden esoteric messaging? Or is it just a cautionary tale about blue balls? Well, you're just going to have to muster up the courage to take a leap of faith right into.a black hole. It'll be well worth the two hours you'll never get back. Thank me later <3.

The movie works only as a metaphor of the universe: empty and meaningless.

I won't bother re-iterating what other people have said about the movie, the plot (or lack thereof) and the pointless one-dimensional characters. I will say there is a certain creepy vibe to the movie that is appealing but it never really pays off. It's just kind of an atmosphere more than anything. And that got reminding me of how Solaris (both of them) had the same tone and feeling but had a great story to it - without being all contrived like this empty plot and a few random scenes of soft-core sex that seemed to be shoe-horned in.