High Life is not an easily digestible film. From its heavy themes all the way to the infamous Fuckbox, it’s always a film with many challenges for the audience. It’s not one to watch on the side, while half on your phone, because it demands your undivided attention at all times. This of course may turn off many, people who are expecting a traditionally linear narrative will be severely disappointed. But for those who are willing to give into Claire Denis’ elusively erotic universe, High Life may prove itself to be her best work to date.
Monte wants to care for his child. They’re the only survivor on the outskirts of a black hole, floating towards an existential nothing. He wants to nurture his child to do better than the people who died before him, the people who failed to survive the pain and intense sexual isolation they suffered. It’s this failure that’s at the core of the film.
It’s a story about how repression leads to violence and how the imprints of that violence leave a mark that the later children need to pick up after. The parts of High Life that follow Willow, Monte’s daughter, and Monte are filled with such regret and pain. Flashes of old crew members haunt the space in which they occupy, bringing back the worst memories from Monte.
“It’s a breathtaking piece of cinema that’s entirely original unto itself, without anything holding it back.”
It’s this exploration of memory and psychological damage that separate High Life from a crowded area of sci fi films. Denis’ gloriously transcendent style puts so much complexity visually and narratively that hasn’t been seen before, that it almost feels like an insult to say it’s like anything else that’s come before. The only inspirations that High Life takes is from Denis’ earlier filmography, notably Trouble Every Day and 35 Shots Of Rum, but even these contributions seem so minimal in the grand scheme of the film. It’s a breathtaking piece of cinema that’s entirely original unto itself, without anything holding it back.
One of the things that strikes me most about the film is it’s visual expression. The choices regarding aspect ratio and lighting help to set a reserved language that it sticks to with every choice made. The visuals complement to the narrative to such an intentional level, they’re almost inseparable from each other. Simple images, crew members floating around the cabin or the wet greens of the garden, tell us more than the dialogue itself.
The images are filled with isolation driven life, life on a scale that our species isn’t used to. It’s in this visual narrative that Denis uses tie together the film. The spaceship, the physical space, the colors, and the saturation are tools used to commence the film into its ethereal nature.
Back to its narrative, High Life deals with sex. Or, to be more specific, sexual isolation. Forced abstinence driven by the physical isolation of people being separated from the population. Every character in the film is starved for sex, with little to satisfy them.
“Rape occurs twice in the run-time of the film. In each given scene, Denis communicates that pleasure isn’t the main source of the reasoning for it.”
The Fuckbox is a metal box built with a self controlled dildo chair with vents to collect the semen leftover from each session. Masturbation is a part of routine, people giving their semen to studies devoted to the conception of a child in space. But when one is not satisfied with self pleasure, what do they do? Well, they resort to assault.
Rape occurs twice in the run-time of the film. In each given scene, Denis communicates that pleasure isn’t the main source of the reasoning for it. Both times are for the power and control each person wants to feel. They’ve lost their own independent freedom, their own autonomy. Their purposelessness drive them, and the ship around them, to a breaking point. Denis’ subtle commentary on perpetrators and victims feels fresh in a time where it only seems to be portrayed incorrectly. In a time where where the topic is as fresh as ever.
High Life is a beast of a film. One I wasn’t able to fully reach out into in the span of this review. It’s so layered with thematic and visual elements that it almost feels like Denis’ collage of ideas she’s built up for years. It’s quite possibly her finest hour, the culmination of everything her career has built up to at this point.
High Life is a masterpiece, one that stays in the chambers of your brain for days, or even weeks after you’ve seen it. Denis proves herself to be an auteur on many levels, and I believe this will turn out to be her most influential and impactful film to date. So please, do yourself a favor, and watch High Life.
