High Life | Claire Denis | NYFF 2018
If you are familiar with the work of French director Claire Denis, then you know that High Life isn’t the space movie that you’re most likely imagining or are used to.
The spacecraft that our “heroes” are found on isn’t full of heroic astronauts or even heroes for that matter. Instead, the ship is full of prisoners who the world has found a use for and has sent them to the far reaches of the galaxy to complete a mission so tough and lengthy that everyone on earth that they know will be dead by the time that it’s completed.
Our main focus is with Monte (Robert Pattinson) who we meet on this ship all alone in the future with a young baby daughter. Denis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Pol Fargeau, retraces the steps of how exactly we got to that point, and it’s not exactly pretty.
The ship is full of pent up aggression and sexuality, with Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche) leading the way trying to see if she can get any woman pregnant on this ship through artificial insemination but she’s had no such luck. Meanwhile, other prisoners spend time in the ships self-dubbed “Fuckbox, a sort of giant masturbation chamber of sorts. This ain’t your father’s space movie.
We see the daily life of brutal attacks, both violence and sexual (and sometimes both), and the nightmarish state of being stuck in a box hauling ass through space with nowhere to go, just a mission that you won’t live long enough or have the freedom to experience its effects. These levels of existential crises are hinted at but not explored with any depth by its screenplay. Instead, it comes off as a glorified sexual and violent nightmare that is pulled off to varying degrees of success thanks to its cast.
Robert Pattinson has continued to impress with not only his specific film choices but his ability to completely transform into his roles and channel all the rage and pain necessary to do so. He’s great as Monte her, one of the few prisoners with an actual good heart despite his mean-streak of violence that landed him onboard the prison vessel. Juliette Binoche is rather haunting as the mysterious and creepy Dr. Dibs and there’s some good smaller work from Mia Goth and André Benjamin as other prisoners.
This isn’t an Interstellar-level of production, but one of a modest budget, yet Denis makes the most of it and uses the limited budget almost to her advantage, with the film having a particular aesthetic captured by cinematographer Yorick Le Saux that separates it from the pack of other space entries.
Equally powerful is the score by Stuart A. Staples of the indie band Tindersticks, which truly captures the confines of the walls of the interstellar prison and has an everlasting haunting presence throughout the film.
There’s no doubt that High Life will most likely frustrate more viewers than it will dazzle, but there’s enough here to make this a worthy and interesting trip to the cinema one that will surely benefit from new viewings and more time spent with this world.
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