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HIGH LIFE
Director: Claire Denis Cast: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin, Mia Goth, Agata Buzek, Lars Eidinger, Claire Tran, Ewan Mitchell, Gloria Obianyo, Jessie Ross MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:53 Release Date: 4/5/19 (limited); 4/12/19 (wider); 4/19/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 18, 2019 What remains from the experience of High Life is the overwhelming sense of isolation that co-writer/director Claire Denis conveys. Here's a film that takes place almost exclusively on a space ship, traveling tens of thousands of light years beyond our solar system, and at first, we only know of one man on board the craft. How long has he been on the ship? There's a lush garden, growing fruits and vegetables and other plants by way of a sprinkler system, which has been thoroughly maintained. There are signs, such as multiple space suits, that other people once populated this vessel, but they're clearly gone now—for who knows how long. At first, there's only Monte (Robert Pattinson), whom we meet during a quiet tour of ship, from that garden, the only sign of nature on a mechanical marvel, and to the salmon-colored corridors of the ship and to those empty space suits, hanging and unused for some unknown amount of time. When we first see him, the lonely astronaut is outside the ship, replacing some vital doohickey amongst the oppressive silence of space. The only sounds are of his grunting and of incidental contact with the hull. The blackness and the stars behind his excursion go on for what might as well be infinity. Then, a baby starts crying. The impact of this opening series of shots—of empty spaces and abandoned gear and the vast nothingness of space—is so overwhelming in communicating isolation that the sound of another person is genuinely startling (At the sound, Monte loses a tool, which spins beyond reach and into the void). The realization that the person is a baby and the implications of that add a layer of horror to it. This is hardly a situation for an adult. How is a baby expected to thrive or, for that matter, even survive under such conditions? Denis' film begins with the routine of Monte raising the baby and doing the few, necessary tasks required to survive. He gathers vegetables and mashes them into baby food. He tries to teach the baby to walk and use the toilet. When the baby cries, Monte pleads with her—not yelling or angry or scolding—to stop: "You're gonna kill me." Every 24 hours, he must dictate a status report. When he does, the ship grants its occupants another 24 hours of life support. The implication, of course, is that, if something were to happen to him, that's also the end of the baby. One starts to wonder if it would be better to be alone in such conditions—without the fear of being responsible for a helpless human life and the responsibility to keep going even though everything is hopeless—or to have the company—even if it's someone who can only communicate with cries, screams, babbling, and the occasional "Da-da." Near the end of the story's opening section, Monte reveals that he did consider the option of being alone. "It would have been so easy," he confesses to the child, and after he ended her life, it would have been his turn to die. When the baby does say that one word she can speak, though, the smile on Monte's face tells us that he's happy with the choice he made, despite the dread of the responsibility and what must be the inevitable outcome of this trip. The film begins simply but with a significant sense of crushing solitude, fear, and gloom. The rest of the story, told through an extended flashback, explains how Monte ended up alone on the ship, with only a baby to protect and keep him company. It is, to say the least, weird. Basically, Monte is the final survivor of an experiment to attempt to harness the energy of a black hole. The researchers are a group of criminals, who had been given life or death sentences. Among them are the unpredictable Boyse (Mia Goth) and Tcherny (André Benjamin), who left his family on Earth in order to transform his shame into glory. Monte points out that, with the difference in time on the ship (traveling at 99 percent the speed of light and stopping near a black hole), Tcherny's young son is now either old or dead. While the film seems to become obsessed with a series of plot oddities, there's at least little denying that it never loses the inherent loneliness of the whole scenario. As for the strange part, that's personified by Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche), who spends her time en route to the black hole doing some side experiments with her fellow crewmembers. She's trying to create a genetically perfect human fetus, and that means gathering sperm samples from the men (in one instance, though rape) and impregnating the women. There's also a room, called "the Box," which features a literal sex-machine. It should be clear that Denis, along with co-screenwriters Jean-Pol Fargeau and Geoff Cox, isn't too concerned with logic. This is science-fiction that mostly uses its scientific backdrop and conceits as a means to examine human nature. It's a rather despairing portrait, seeing human beings as exploitative (not only Dibs' experiments but also the setup of how these characters ended up on the ship), driven mostly by primal impulses, and willing to sacrifice others for a fleeting rush (A climactic ride on the gravitational forces of the black hole puts an end to the mission and the characters' only purpose). High Life doesn't make much rational sense, but that's not the point. Denis has made an odd but captivating study of how truly alone we are in the universe. The little hope—and perhaps that's all we need—is that we can be alone together. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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