Movie Review: High Life (English)
Claire Denis' cerebral epic High Life isn't your typical flashy science fiction movie. But the result is chilling and sublime all the same. The film — while playing out like high-concept dystopian body horror in the garb of an intergalactic odyssey — melds together fascinating ideas of life and death that coheres into a captivating saga of intimacy and isolation, hope and doom.
At its heart, it's about a handful of prisoners being used as guinea pigs in a deep space mission to harvest alternative energy from a nearby black hole. It's a one-way suicidal voyage with no hope for a return to Earth, yet embark they must — not least because it's an opportunity to contemplate their crimes and right the wrongs that drove them to an extraterrestrial exile.
Denis plays the cards close to her chest, warping time to her will to create a mind-bending riddle of the highest order that probes the ultimate existential question plaguing humankind: life. It's not surprising, then, the movie keeps throwing one curveball after the other, as it explores themes of abstinence, fertility, procreation, parenting, and the continuation of life in the void.
High Life is far too a restrained film; even the boxy, lo-fi spaceship #7 that ferries them to their destination is austere and resembles a floating prison, as is their drab, uniform clothing, implying they have no control over their lives despite being free of their earthly confines. They may be untethered from terra firma, but they're no less captive, immured within a sterile metallic cage — a jail no less — save for a greenhouse that epitomises the centre of life, grounding a story that's hurtling weightlessly through space and straight into the mouth of a black hole.
The film is almost dream-like, a tangled web of events that doesn't make sense until, suddenly, it does. It's the kind of movie where a mission leader has to convince an A.I. every 24 hours they're still alive to keep the ship functioning. The haunting score by Stuart A. Staples (of indie-rock outfit Tindersticks) offers a compelling through line that echoes the elliptical narrative, but it's Denis who maintains a firm grip over the jumbled tale, delivering a kaleidoscopic experience that's atmospheric and deeply affecting.
Denis plays the cards close to her chest, warping time to her will to create a mind-bending riddle of the highest order that probes the ultimate existential question plaguing humankind: life. It's not surprising, then, the movie keeps throwing one curveball after the other, as it explores themes of abstinence, fertility, procreation, parenting, and the continuation of life in the void.
High Life is far too a restrained film; even the boxy, lo-fi spaceship #7 that ferries them to their destination is austere and resembles a floating prison, as is their drab, uniform clothing, implying they have no control over their lives despite being free of their earthly confines. They may be untethered from terra firma, but they're no less captive, immured within a sterile metallic cage — a jail no less — save for a greenhouse that epitomises the centre of life, grounding a story that's hurtling weightlessly through space and straight into the mouth of a black hole.
The film is almost dream-like, a tangled web of events that doesn't make sense until, suddenly, it does. It's the kind of movie where a mission leader has to convince an A.I. every 24 hours they're still alive to keep the ship functioning. The haunting score by Stuart A. Staples (of indie-rock outfit Tindersticks) offers a compelling through line that echoes the elliptical narrative, but it's Denis who maintains a firm grip over the jumbled tale, delivering a kaleidoscopic experience that's atmospheric and deeply affecting.
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