High Life (Claire Denis)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4827558/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Life_(2018_film))

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/highlife_01-e1536523305370.jpeg?w=780

[Henry Gale]

This is an example of a film I absolutely wanted to love but definitely did not. Later reading raves and well-expressed admiration of it afterwards and even discussing it face to face with instant fans of it made me go, "See, I wish I saw that movie!"

The film is obviously visually and atmospherically designed with stunning precision, because it's Denis and for a genre that she's never stepped into before, it feels as if you're getting every creative idea that's ever crossed her mind about what she wanted to do in a spacey space. The acting is also uniformly compelling, and the bookend portions of the film definitely provide a much more resonant, simple version of what I wish the film was more focused on in its ambitions, but otherwise, for the greater portion of it, in both with themes and more "extreme" material, I just felt like it wasn't as radical or complex as it thought it was. It's interesting on the surface, but it just didn't impact me or leave me with anything to really chew on. It's so headfirst and brash in how it tussles with its ideas (from character's dialogue and actions to juxtaposing cuts and the emphasis on how each scene is sequenced) that it mostly felt like it was leaving little to the imagination as to what it's getting at. There's the criticism that gets used a lot with critics of action movies that they often feel like "watching someone else play a video game" (which it should be said these days has become a viable form of entertainment and even career for many) and to me High Life felt like someone watching an especially sexual version of Myst or Dead Space (if the monsters were.. us! :eek:)

I saw someone say that they may need three or four viewings to fully unpack it, whereas I feel that (unless I'm massively overlooking elements of it that are keys to it clicking in a drastically greater way) I just about dug into it as much as I could and feel like I got it just fine, but that it didn't overly impress or connect with me. Seeing at its world premiere screening at TIFF was an odd experience, because in terms of making it a major gala presentation, with all the usual glitz and glam and pomp and circumstance, it's such a decidedly weird film to have been chosen as one of those big screenings. If it wasn't from a world-renowned director with a major movie star at the center of it, it could've just as easily been slipped into the festival's Midnight Madness program, and likely played just as awkwardly to hoots and hollers at the moments people shuttered, gasped, and exited with us.

I won't dwell too much on the walkouts, considering it's a massive venue, having my own knowledge of how tickets for gala premieres tend to be doled out to employees of major sponsors who were likely happy to attend upon hearing "TIFF World Premiere!" and "Robert Pattinson!" but otherwise had no real sense of exactly up what a visceral, deliberately unpleasant sci-fi arthouse film they'd be subjected to on a Sunday night that would've ended around midnight, likely preferring to opti for sleep before Monday morning work instead. So I get it, but being seated on the floor near one of the doors, it was very noticeable, and even distracting during its most explicit scenes. But when others see it in their own circumstances eventually see it, I feel that in those same handful of intense, wacko, even disturbing sequences they'll likely have a similar internal questions as to whether or not they're really all that into letting the film take them down those particular paths, especially when they involve everything from mechanical sex rooms to outright assault. I knew I was sticking it through until the end, but had no bewilderment as to why others gave up on it.

But again, to those who have and are sure find a deeper experience with it, all the power to you, as I really wanted to be there with you too. And I hope that if you're reading this you find yourself being positively affected by it as well, but all I know that this was just clearly a taste that didn't sit well with me, even if I can acknowledge and intermittently admire its quality.

[Stay Puft]

Amusingly, I was also comparing it to a videogame afterwards. Specifically, System Shock 2. Robert Pattinson wanders the abandoned corridors of his spaceship and flashbacks of the tragedies that befell the crew manifest before him like the ghosts of the Van Braun. I love the way the movie is structured, Denis's familiar elliptical storytelling returning over and over to the most difficult and painful moments; a father trying to raise a daughter in a house haunted by trauma. It was one of the most fascinating and alluring experiences of the festival for me, maybe of the whole year so far. I've loved reading about it as much as watching it, too. The various takes I've read on the ending have been intriguing, and the movie just keeps moving and growing and changing in my mind.

I've been totally obsessed with this movie since I've seen it.

And yeah that was the most walkouts I've ever seen during a screening since Albert Serra's Birdsong ten years ago. The reaction of this dude sitting in front of me to Robert Pattinson being raped was incredible. I'm surprised this was a Gala screening instead of something like If Beale Street Could Talk (which I didn't see, but audience-wise, it would have made so much sense for them to have switched slots). It would never fly in Midnight Madness, though; that's probably the most conservative and closed-minded audience you'll find at TIFF.

[Ivan Drago]

I'm as excited for this as I am anxious. I love slow, thought-provoking sci-fi but the divisiveness has me wary. It doesn't help that I've never seen anything from Denis.

[PURPLE]

I'm as excited for this as I am anxious. I love slow, thought-provoking sci-fi but the divisiveness has me wary. It doesn't help that I've never seen anything from Denis.Early prediction: This will not end well.

[Stay Puft]

A24 is releasing this on April 12. Can we get a bump to the 2019 forum?

Trailer tomorrow, new poster now:
https://i.imgur.com/zkf7zxV.jpg

[Skitch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnBhUiSn-Q

[Ezee E]

IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4827558/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/High_Life_film_poster.jpg

[Dukefrukem]

and??

[Stay Puft]

http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?7287-High-Life-(Claire-Denis)

[Ezee E]

and??

Will post later tonight.

[Ezee E]

So yeah. This definitely wants to be a truly "arthouse astronaut" movie but never for a second did I believe this space crew were people that were sentenced to life in prison. It is very miscast.

Along with that, there's a little too much going on in terms of a plan to gather energy for a black hole, artificial insemination not working out, and a mad scientist. Despite all that going on, it's just... never really interesting.

We've been spoiled with so much high budget space movies that a lower budget really sets itself apart too.

[Pop Trash]

I appreciate the existence of High Life and I appreciate A24 releasing a hard arthouse sci-fi movie destined to make large swaths of its core audience confused (even by arthouse audience standards). I'm not entirely sure it's successful and it uses a lot of fractured narrative and cryptic motivations to disguise that it's not wildly different from eg. Alien 3 and Alien: Covenant (in fact, the story seems to be a mashup of their respective prison and mad scientist IN SPACE tropes). The black hole inevitably invites comparisons to Interstellar and Nolan himself is no slouch when it comes to fractured narratives. The crew losing their marbles while inching closer to a doomed mission reminds me of Boyle's Sunshine as well.

It's possible this is a case of too little too late. There's no dearth of space movies or even arty sci-fi as of late (Alex Garland and Jonathan Glazer's recent work comes to mind), so if this came out fifteen or twenty years ago, I might be more open to it, who knows?

It's only the second Claire Denis film I've seen (the other being White Material, and I don't see a lot of parallels between the two). I do think this is the first sci-fi film I've seen directed by a woman (the only other one I can even think of off the top of my head is Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, which I still have yet to see) and there's an attention to reproduction, bodily fluid, and sex as something both consequential (as in pregnancy and child-rearing) and potentially violent (as in rape) that I don't think a male director would approach in the same way, or approach at all (with the possible exception of David Cronenberg, whose sensibility this often resembles).

[Ivan Drago]

Early prediction: This will not end well.

It sure didn't.

I want to think it's making a statement about contemporary human connection, procreation, and/or the meaning of life, but it's so fragmented that I could only understand bits and pieces rather than the entire picture.It's well made in every aspect, and there's clearly a message being communicated....but it's done in a way that's non-linear, bizarre and very, very incoherent. At least for someone of my brain size.

But I can definitely appreciate its existence, and this is only my first exposure to Denis, so I still want to check out more of her work before eventually circling back to this film. Because what's there is well-made in every aspect and purely artistic in execution.

[Peng]

Yeah, even sight unseen I can tell that the Claire Denis factor will overpower the sci-fic factor flat for High Life, so anyone going in expecting the latter in the form of recent sci-fi surge will come away baffled. I've seen only three from her; Beau Travail is great though, almost one of my favorite films ever, so still eager to see this.

[Ivan Drago]

Yeah, even sight unseen I can tell that the Claire Denis factor will overpower the sci-fic factor flat for High Life, so anyone going in expecting the latter in the form of recent sci-fi surge will come away baffled. I've seen only three from her; Beau Travail is great though, almost one of my favorite films ever, so still eager to see this.

Eh, I was told repeatedly from a buddy who saw it at TIFF that it was really weird, so that's what I expected.

I like weird, but that was somehow weirder than most arthouse movies I love.

[PURPLE]

It sure didn't.

I want to think it's making a statement about contemporary human connection, procreation, and/or the meaning of life, but it's so fragmented that I could only understand bits and pieces rather than the entire picture.It's well made in every aspect, and there's clearly a message being communicated....but it's done in a way that's non-linear, bizarre and very, very incoherent. At least for someone of my brain size.

But I can definitely appreciate its existence, and this is only my first exposure to Denis, so I still want to check out more of her work before eventually circling back to this film. Because what's there is well-made in every aspect and purely artistic in execution.L’intrus is perhaps the most non-linear, bizarre, and very, very incoherent “narrative” film ever made - and I can’t make a coherent argument to say it’s not among the best. Love it or hate it, she does it better than anybody!

[baby doll]

It seems like every other Denis film is aggressively dour (for every Vendredi soir or 35 rhums there's a Trouble Every Day or Les Salauds), so I suppose after Un beau soleil intérieur (probably the closest thing she's done to a comedy) we were due for something gloomy and unpleasant. Still, it's a little shocking how little wonder there is in this film. There's nothing here that's equivalent to, say, the zero gravity sequence in Solaris. So basically we're left with unpleasant people in a hopeless situation doing nasty things to one another for two hours. I don't blame people for walking out.

[Peng]

My fourth Denis after (chronologically) U.S. Go Home, Beau Travail, and Bastards. The latter two illustrates how her elliptical storytelling can be mined for both haunting beauty and grimy menace. But High Life somehow values its "plot", used very loosely for those three films, more than the director's usual. And that clangs with her trademark style hard; to me its sci-fi expositions and "characters" going through experiments just instantly invites questions about logistics, motivations, and simple cause-and-effect plotting that are clearly not her forte, or even intention. It flatlines these people into mere thematic puppets moved into outrageous situations, with a predetermined end from the beginning, that it rather becomes a slog.

I could have watched the scenes of Pattison with his daughter for another hour, where an elemental thread of paternal love in the face of dark, indescribable, otherwise lonely oblivion gains considerable heft from the glancing, observational beauty of Denis' direction. If I ever returned to this film, that will be my throughline to which I hang on and see if I gain anything more from the heavy-handed, more-signified-than-intuitive unpleasantness in the rest of the film. 6/10

[Dukefrukem]

I pretty much hated everything about this film. The premise, the way it's shot, the score, the sequence of events, the beginning middle and end... I liked Robert Pat Pattinson.

[Dukefrukem]

So yeah. This definitely wants to be a truly "arthouse astronaut" movie but never for a second did I believe this space crew were people that were sentenced to life in prison. It is very miscast.

Along with that, there's a little too much going on in terms of a plan to gather energy for a black hole, artificial insemination not working out, and a mad scientist. Despite all that going on, it's just... never really interesting.

We've been spoiled with so much high budget space movies that a lower budget really sets itself apart too.

Totally. Who the fuck's bright idea was it to put a bunch of prisoners on a ship together with practically no rules, no guards and no one to keep them in check? The sedatives were supposed to do that?

Who's 2nd bright idea was it that we should also be matching artificial insemination experiments with harnessing energy from a back hole?

The relationships and emotions throughout the movie are totally wack.

[StanleyK]

Surprised by the divided reaction. I'm hardly the biggest Claire Denis fan but I found this well-paced and interesting, despite a couple of WTF scenes (like the fuckbox, or the unneccessary exposition by the scientist on the train). It wasn't confusing at all; anyone who thought has clearly never watched L'Intrus.