High Life

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.

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. We had high hopes based on some DVD box comments but in the end we were disappointed. It wasn't a total loss but we got so little for the time invested.

As is explained in the DVD extras the writer/director does not like to spell everything out, she wants the viewers to extrapolate and interpret. As a result the movie is rather deliberate and not everything makes sense.

It is a space mission outside our Solar system, presumably to study reproduction during space travel and also to travel to the vicinity of a black hole to see if its energy can be harvested for Earth use. But to get there they have to travel for years at 99% the speed of light, communications with Earth no longer possible, and even if they were successful with the black hole how would the energy be transported?

So the science and physics is very shaky, however only there for a setting for the story, most of which is how a bunch of criminals would interact on a long, secluded journey if all their survivals depended on it?

The movie has some interesting elements but overall we found it to be a big miss, not worthy of the almost 2 hours to view it.

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.

"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."

I've heard of Claire Denis but shamefully have never seen any of her work. I liked the trailer for this film. It seemed like a high concept space thriller, which as you know is something that is in my wheelhouse. I also have faith in everything A24 produces so I had to see this as soon as it came out. Having watched it the film is certainly visually arresting and quite disturbing. I'm not sure it fully meets what I was hoping for but Denis's film is thought provoking and asks questions of what humans in loneliness would do when on the brink of madness.

The film is about a space crew consisting of criminals and their mission of going towards a black hole to find a new energy source. The space crew soon realize that the doctor on the ship has some alternative ideas that include invasive sexual procedures meant to create life. I'm still not exactly certain on the solidity of that plot but this is the general gist. Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche lead with supporting performances from Andre 3000 and the always lovely Mia Goth.

There's talent on display in High Life. Pattinson is a very solid actor as could be seen from his other A24 feature, Good Time. The film looks like an authentic look into a space ship and I thought the film possessed some brilliant cinematography and camera handling. I especially liked the look of the black hole and the actions that occurred when approaching the black hole. I like when science fiction films (space ones namely) maintain the integrity of science and that seemed to be the case here.

The film borders on being very out there almost drifting off in plot like the bodies in space. What we see though is a fairly disturbing sexually charged mission in space with characters descending into utter madness and chaos. The film is definitely reminiscent of other space films before it but Denis strives to set it apart. I think its an impressively made film though it doesn't always work for me. It may require another watch to fully grasp and comprehend what Denis tried to go for.

6.5/10