Review: High Life (2018)

“Cruelty? What do you know about Cruelty?”

This movie is a “taboo” in the mainstream sci-fi space genre. If the earth is heaven, and the black hole is hell, here some people are drifting in cosmic chaos leading by sin. The film takes us to the eerie odyssey of a criminal-turned-astronaut (Robert Pattinson) into the infinite where time tests his and our patience. Believe me, there are no wars of stars or no one guards any galaxy, instead, here, characters are getting away from humanity and heading toward the bizarre black hole of immorality, sexploitation, existential crisis, loneliness, hollowness, and some fluid, some box, etc.!!

The movie begins in a distant future where Monte (Robert) and an infant are all alone in a matchbox type spacecraft, where he is trying to take care of the child and controlling losing his mind. The story moves in a backward-forward manner, and we see a few other characters entirely driven by their basic instincts. The only authority they have is of white devilish doctor Dibs (Juliette Binoche), who does her gruesome sexual experiments. Interestingly, she is a doctor who has killed her children, now supervising breeding in the spaceship for the future generation, in her morbid way. Only Monte has not surrendered himself to such passion, maybe that’s why he has nicknamed as ‘monk’ on the ship, and among his crew members, he only survives to last.

This suicide squad of criminals is on a science mission to explore a new world. Facing the death penalty and life imprisonment, these young adult prisoners have accepted the suicidal journey where they have sent to harvest the energy of the nearest black hole for the earth and to come back. It’s like a substitute sentence. There is nothing heroic here. Like some waste, they are thrown out of the earth in a rubbish container looking spaceship. Since they are offenders serving their punishments in jails, and nobody will concern about them on the planet, they become the liable choice for this long term deadly mission.

Movie Review: Fore Sama

The talented French filmmaker Claire Denis has created this whole metaphor where these people left out unconcerned by the entire cosmos, packed in a jailed-shaped-spaceship without parole and even cannot escape. It may seem sci-fi space movie, but it feels like a psychological drama where Clair experiments with the mind of the helpless people putting them in a situation from where they cannot run away, literally and metaphorically. There is so much emptiness is here. In a vessel like space, a vessel like a spaceship, with vessel-like humans, moving toward ultimate vessel black hole.

The movie asks so many questions. For how long can we control our desires? What is our pressure point? What if there is nowhere to escape? If there is no way back? The movie makes us realize that our life is already a suicidal journey since we are born because it will inevitably end at death. It is floating in the chaos of a world full of people yet empty. We all will be in the black hole of oblivion. We all are on the same journey in the same direction. But some of us follow animalist desires, breakdown quickly, surrender without a fight and die early and painfully. But some fight them, with strength, with hope and give meaning to the existence. Life is a journey in which where we are going is not important, but how we are going. It reminds a few lines of a beautiful Gujarati gazal:

 

જુદી જિંદગી છે મિજાજે – મિજાજે;

જુદી બંદગી છે નમાજે – નમાજે.

છે એક જ સમંદર, થયું એટલે શું?

જુદા છે મુસાફર જહાજે – જહાજે.

જીવન જેમ જુદાં છે કાયામાં જુદી,

છે મૃત્યુય જુદાં જનાજે – જનાજે.

 

In the end, let’s avoid a void between us, give each other strength and support to ease the pain of the end.

 “Shall we?”