Review: High Life
High Life, directed by Claire Denis, tells the tale of Monte (Robert Patterson), the last survivor of a group of death row convicts thrown into space to research a black hole for the good of humanity. During this voyage he has a daughter through unintentional means and now must raise her and survive together in the deep, cold unknown of space.
This is the first English language film from director Claire Denis, who is something of a rock star in the world of the new wave French cinema movement. She’s directed films such as Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day, and White Material, and honestly I’d be lying if I said I’m a fan of her work. It’s not because I think she’s not that great, I’m just not familiar with her work, but from what I saw in this film I can tell she has a great understanding of the visual medium as a whole.
High Life is a very challenging and thought-provoking film to watch. If you’re not into artistic films with vague meanings then you’re not going to like this film. This is very much a film made for cinephiles, as Denis doesn’t waste any time holding your hand throughout the film. There’s a intricate amount of depth in this entire film and I found it to be an incredibly interesting watch, for better or for worse.
The cinematography is very well thought out; despite the majority of the film taking place in cramp corridors the camera feels very fluid and glides around pretty dynamically. The music from Stuart A. Staples was eerie and haunting; this film does a very good job with creating an uneasy and unsettling environment. The performances were overall great; Robert Patterson was great as always, Juliette Binoche was great, André 3000 was easily the most likable character in the entire film, and everyone else did fine for the most part. The space sequences were very well done, the tone was effectively unsettling, and the way Denis unpacks the emotional depth of each character and the overall themes of the film was incredibly masterful.
My biggest gripe with this film as with other films similar to this one is the pacing. This film takes its sweet time to unveil its overall message to us. Most of the film focuses on the flashback with what happened to the crew, and a lot of the crew members had nothing interesting about them. Most of them don’t even say a single line and yet the film spends so much time with these unlikable characters. Robert Patterson’s relationship with his daughter (played by newcomer Jessie Ross when all grown up) is hardly glossed on.
The film tried to be something of a modern day sci-fi epic, but personally there wasn’t much to this film thematically to make it as thought provoking as something like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, which this film seems to borrow a lot from. The ending was also open-ended and bleak but incredibly redundant. The film doesn’t spend too much time with the daughter character so any message the film tries to tell me was lost. Other than those issues I didn’t find too much else wrong with it.
Overall I ultimately liked this film. It’s not as epic or thought provoking as I hoped it to be, but I found enough meat in it for me to let this film marinate on. As I mentioned earlier, people who are too use to traditional narratives and don’t really care about the art behind each film will most likely not enjoy this film. If, however, you feel like watching something challenging and are overall a fan of Denis, then you’ll probably like this film fine. Check it out and see for yourself.
Final Verdict: 7/10