High Life Film Review: Birth & Rebirth

Robert Pattinson and his crew have to endure the worst of humanity on an intergalactic prison ship in Claire Denis’ High Life.

For the first 20 minutes, it is simply Monte (Robert Pattinson, The Batman) and his baby (Scarlett Lindsey) living on a space station with very little context about their situation. High Life is an oblique movie all the way through, but eventually we are at least let in on the rough details of the circumstances that have led us here, as the film jumps back and forth across time. A group of convicts has been sent on a one-way trip right into a black hole, and Monte might be the only remaining survivor.

Dibs (Juliette Binoche, The Taste of Things) is the scientist leading the operation, who uses the prisoners and their bodies for her experiments. She seems mostly interested in human reproduction, as we watch her attempting to impregnate a woman who subsequently needs to give birth to and raise a healthy child. This task is at the outer reaches of space and under exposure to radiation not the easiest to complete. But Dibs is willing to go to great lengths. Even if that means taking advantage of crew members, like the attractive Boyse (Mia Goth, Pearl), in inhumane ways.

But Juliette Binoche’s Dibs is not the only one. The entire crew is constantly on edge, with members rubbing up against one another on the daily. We watch as the tensions rise, actions become more extreme, and the numbers decrease. Claire Denis has created a microcosm depicting humanity reduced back down to its lowest instincts and the ugly reality of what we’re capable of doing to one another.

Sex is a big topic in High Life, although it’s certainly not an erotic movie. The subject is dealt with in the same calculated distance and sterile coldness that Juliette Binoche’s scientist views it from. A lot of talk about masturbation, insemination, reproduction, and other terms that strip the act of any sensuality. One scene in which Juliette Binoche’s character enters a weird box designed to get off its users plays more like an unsettling nightmare than anything resembling eroticism. The unsettling atmosphere is evoked in no small part due to the rumbling synth score of Tindersticks.

It’s one of the many paradoxes director Claire Denis plays with. High Life is very sexually charged, while lacking any eroticism; it’s a film about a mission that’s meant to give convicts a second chance at life that’s simultaneously a surefire death sentence for anyone on the ship. The vastness of space is constantly contrasted against the confined space of the intergalactic prison cell. The spaceship itself could so easily be nothing more than another depressing grey box too. But in the hands of Claire Denis and her team, it becomes a retro-futuristic capsule in which bold primary colors overwhelm almost every frame.

But the most important paradox of all is that, within the utter nihilism of the world she has created, Claire Denis never loses sight of even just the smallest sense of hope. Robert Pattinson’s Monte might be a convict with a life sentence trapped on a prison ship that’s heading right into the nearest black hole with a crew that has died around him, but he also has a newborn daughter to hold in his arms. In a final paradox, Claire Denis acknowledges that humans are capable of committing the worst crimes against each other, and yet, at the same time, the belief in one another and the love between us are the only things that can move us forward.

High Life is now available to watch globally on digital and on demand.

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