High Life (2019) [Blu-ray]
Adventure | Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi

Tagline: Oblivion awaits.

A father and his daughter struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation. Monte (Robert Pattinson) and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to deep space. Takes place beyond the solar system in a future that seems like the present. About a group of criminals who accept a mission in space to become the subjects of a human reproduction experiment. They find themselves in the most unimaginable situation after a storm of cosmic rays hit the ship. The crewdeath-row inmates led by a doctor (Juliette Binoche) with sinister motiveshas vanished. As the mystery of what happened onboard the ship is unraveled, father and daughter must rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.

Storyline: Takes place beyond the solar system in a future that seems like the present. About a group of criminals who accept a mission in space to become the subjects of a human reproduction experiment. They find themselves in the most unimaginable situation after a storm of cosmic rays hit the ship.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Anne Cohen April 5, 2019 -- The plot of High Life is a tangled web, each sequence acting as a fragment of a much larger narrative that doesn’t become clear until, suddenly, it does. The film almost feels dream-like in that sense: You can remember the overall feeling, and individual parts make perfect sense; but try and explain it to someone else out of order, and it all comes off random and disjointed. So, before attempting to parse the film's ambiguous ending, here's a little recap of the plot.

The film’s beginning is actually the middle of the overall story. When we first meet Monte (Pattinson), he and his infant daughter Willow (Scarlett Lindsay) are the only survivors of a group of death-row inmates sentenced to a dangerous space mission trillions of miles away from Earth. The first sequence deals with him caring for the baby, who we later learn was conceived as part of a sexual experiment run by scientist and de-facto leader, Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche). A criminal herself, Dibs was tasked with attempting to create life in the void of space, a task rendered near-impossible because of high radiation levels.

Through a series of flashbacks, we get to know the group and their routine before the events leading to their deaths. Tasked with harvesting the energy from a black hole, theirs is a mission with no return — the closer they get, the more they have to come to terms with the idea that they’re not coming back.
As far as film settings go, space spans a broad spectrum of genres, from Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: Space Odyssey to Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a void that can be used as a backdrop to examine the human condition, or as cool contrast for lasers.

“There is no hope to escape,” Denis explained during a New York Film Festival screening last year. The clunky, artless ship, despite its small patch of lush, thriving greenery, is a sterile cage. These inmates may have escaped prison, but they’re no less captive. When they’re not being used by Dibs, they mostly lounge around in their bunks, their drab, uniform clothing suggesting the anonymity of prison garb. They have no real control over their existence.

So, what does this mean? The most obvious assumption is that the only way out of this predicament is death. And indeed, the film’s opening credits, which overlay the title over the falling bodies of Monte’s fellow inmates, doomed to float in space for eternity, do point towards that kind of fatal outcome.
Up until reaching the black hole, Monte could still harbor even the faintest hope of rescue, divine intervention, some technological breakthrough — anything that might provide him and his daughter with some means back to Earth. The fact that the two encounter another ship, empty except for dogs (animals that hold weighty significance for Monte, as we learn throughout the film), moments before making their final decision, is no coincidence. It’s a sign, a coming-to-terms with the idea that there is no other option. There is no hope left.

[CSW] -2.4- The first thing you should know about High Life is that it is oozing with every kind of bodily fluid. (Seriously, this film is obsessed with the abject - period blood, semen, urine, feces - you excrete it, it's there.) The second thing you should know about High Life is that you will most likely leave without a sense of closure. The plot of High Life is a tangled web, each sequence acting as a fragment of a much larger narrative that doesn't become clear until, suddenly, it does. The film almost feels dream-like in that sense: You can remember the overall feeling, and individual parts make perfect sense; but try and explain it to someone else out of order, and it all comes off random and disjointed. In High Life, space is "the ultimate jail." Tasked with harvesting the energy from a black hole, theirs is a mission with no return - the closer they get, the more they have to come to terms with the idea that they're not coming back. And yet, the film's ending does represent an escape of sorts. In the final moments of High Life, Monte and Willow (now a teenager, having grown up with no human contact other than her father) are finally faced with the black hole in question, rimmed with an eerie yellow light that she dubs the "tiger's eye." They've arrived at their final destination. And with nowhere further to travel to, they board one of the ship's smaller shuttles and dive into the black hole, completing the mission that Monte set out for nearly 76,000 days ago. The final words spoken are a brief question, and it's even more succinct response: "Shall we?" "Yes."
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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