3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): High Life

2018, Claire Denis (Un beau soleil intérieur) -- Amazon

I didn't get it. I didn't get the point. I didn't get the point of the movie, of their journey, of the choices on what human interactions were depicted in the movie. I feel dumb, I feel disconnected from an older intellect that, if not tangibly, would have felt a gut reaction to what I had watched, an inherent understanding of what the director had been trying to do here, even if I was not able to coherently say it out loud. 

I think that a lot these days -- what is the point, what was the point. I look back at my choices, my interactions, what I chose to do with my time and I wonder... why? I look at it right at this exact moment, where I watched a movie, and persevered to the end, only mildly entertained, and I wonder why. Why am I watching movies that don't excite me, why am I writing about movies without the enthusiastic desire to do so, why do I fill my queues with movies that stagnate until I wonder why I added them. So many why's that only have one banal answer -- because. Just because. I rage at the dying light, seeing fewer days ahead of me than behind, wondering if I will be filling those days with more value. I don't really have to wonder -- value will be overwhelmed by just because, because that is life. My life. What I choose.

In some ways, dude, that is exactly what the characters in the movie are going through. Some ways. Not much of it.

Kent's point in watching this movie was that he was filling his holidays off with a bunch of movies over seven days. That was the point, enjoying the sheer ability to cram the experiences into the short time period. I get that, that is one of the reasons we (Marmy and me, not Kent and I) do out "31 Days of ...", for the enjoyment of consumption for consumption's sake, for over-exposure, for over-saturation. Because some things are fun, just for fun's sake. He liked this movie much more than I did.

High Life is a space movie in three acts, about a crew of criminals sent into deep space, a journey from which they will not return, to a black hole, to do... experiments, for some reason. Act one is the introduction to Monte (Robert Pattinson, The Batman), a lone survivor with a baby. Act two revisits the journey, the crew of misfits, the experiments onboard and how the baby Willow comes about. Act three, which is very brief, have Monte and Willow, now a teenager, coming to the climax of their journey. Act two dominates the movie, and to be entirely honest, I did not like it, at all.

Even just writing this, I recall why watched this movie. In my head there is an unwritten story about a lone astronaut. It is a tale of space and purpose and technology, but for the most part it is about loneliness and isolation. So, any opportunity to see someone else explore this idea, I am onboard with. And, I like seeing how other creators explore space ships and technology, through practical effects, high & low budgets. This one was very much in the low budget.

The ship's depiction is interesting -- its just a big box with engines and the number 7 on the side. That implies six failed missions before. There is just one crew member, the captain, who has to punch his biometric driven code into the computer system once a day or... well, everything will power down. So, no thoughts of mutiny here, well, until he has a stroke and one of the prisoners, who is also the lead scientist experimenting on the criminals, realizes she can cut out that biometric code trigger and others can pretend to be him. The ship's hallways are not the usual octagonal or metal lattice work dominated conduits, just hallways, with doors, a few air locks and only a bit of greebles to make it scifi. The best part of the depiction is the garden, a massive wild structure just utterly overgrown with green -- they obviously have that science perfected and it feeds them well. It seems everyone has a purpose on the ship, but that doesn't stop them from eventually allowing their little society to break down, killing each other, until only Monte is left. Because, humans are the worst.

This middle act is dominated by the experiments the scientist Dibs (Juliette Binoche, Ghost in the Shell) is performing on them. She is obsessed with reproduction, despite being a child killer herself, and collects semen whenever the men masturbate. And then forces the women to become impregnated. But all the children are dying. The whole segment is uncomfortably intimate and visual, replacing alluring (which typical Hollywood would attempt to seduce us via) with disturbing. Only Monte seems distanced from it all, as he chooses abstinence over interaction. Until he is drugged and raped by Dibs, and she uses it, along with Boyse (Mia Goth, Pearl) the angriest of the women, to create Willow. All of it leading to her birth is so ... unsavoury.

If there was any relief to this act, it was in recollection of act one. Monte's caring for Willow is true and obvious. They still have a long number of years until they arrive at their destination so he is going to keep her alive and happy as well as he can. And he does. The final act has her as a teenager, but once again, I wonder what the point of this final, and very final, act was. I can postulate and come up with all kinds of story telling formulaic ideals, but I am still left wondering why and what was the whole value to the story that is told.