Sensual and hypnotic, haunting in the best way, High Life is a masterwork of science fiction horror from writer/director Claire Denis. We're trapped on a spacecraft filled with convicted criminals, helmed by a mad scientist, on a suicide mission to investigate what happens in a black hole. If that isn't the most provocative setup in recent sci-fi history, I don't know what is.
Especially with this kind of aesthetic. For a film with such potentially plot-driven foundations, this movie ends up being more of a free-floating chamber piece about human nature on the brink of the abyss. They are literally hurtling toward annihilation -- though they don't all know it -- and what do they do in the meantime? They are forbidden from sexual activity with each other, though the mad scientist leading them (none other than a magnificent Juliette Binoche), obsessed with successful artificial insemination, harvests them regularly for bodily fluids. Similarly, they frequently use the "Fuckbox" on the ship to release their frustrated energies; the most notable scene, in my mind, is of Binoche herself riding a dildo chair in what may well be the most breathtaking and violent autosexual (if that's what we might call masturbation?) scene in cinematic history.
It's not all sex (though that's pretty much the main thrust, so to speak), as Robert Pattinson's protagonist demonstrates. His celibate character is the only one left (...SPOILER ALERT?), as we see at the beginning of this nonlinear movie, to care for a child named Willow. We find out later Willow is his own, but since this information comes from the mad scientist and her experiments, we can't entirely trust it. Pattinson delivers an exceptional performance here, narrating and driving the film in both its heady patches, and its more grounded scenes such as when he advises against us eating our own shit.
Speaking of which, if you want to place this film amidst other spiritual spacefaring movies, I'd place it along with Solaris and Gravity more than with The Martian. Its concern with bodily fluids seems taken from Prometheus while its final act focus on the black hole itself is more in line with Interstellar. But while High Life references its own genre, it is never less than extravagantly original. At once grounded and abstract, the film suggestively encourages us to consider these diverse characters and their bizarre situation as symbolic of themes a little closer to home.
I won't spend too much time talking about this movie because I still don't have wholly coherent thoughts about it. It's just beautiful and creepy and fascinating, and it's meant to be an experience more than an intellectual discussion. You're supposed to feel the movie as you go -- and, yes, use your brain to fill in the gaps -- and sensually appreciate its visceral power before you dissect anything. Inasmuch as you can truly dissect something as obtuse as a "Fuckbox".
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