High Life

High Life is some repulsive artsy rubbish that lacks any obvious concept or meaning, showcasing a series of random flashbacks pertaining to the protagonist. Those flashbacks feature characters who are a) completely unrelated to the plot; b) unnecessarily confusing; c) incredibly annoying. Inappropriate narration means are used and even clash with the structure of some of the Earth-located scenes. Visually speaking, this flick is weak and unexciting. Right from the beginning, rigid Robert Pattinson and his interaction with the bawling sprog made it clear that I wouldn’t have this flick in my heart, but I really didn’t expect such a painful, boring and unintelligible piece of… ehm, ‘art’! [Sitges 2018] (15.10.2018)

A difficult-to-grasp, supple and extremely lifeless space drama about a group of convicts who chose to serve science instead of spending life in prison, and therefore find themselves on a spaceship traveling to a black hole for the rest of their lives while the doctor on board the sip tries (sometimes against their will) to replicate them. It seems to me that this is a sophisticated art critique of dog breeding against the background of a bizarre story that humans and wild animals are not that far apart from each other. But it's definitely not a well-told story, because it starts non-linearly, essentially from the end, which in turn deprives all of the remaining events (taking place in flashbacks) of any potential tension and drama, thereby revealing everything in advance. The already rather worn out (and due to the aforementioned also extremely predictable) plot is then unnecessarily disturbed by somewhat random memories of the heroes about their lives on Earth and other isolated inserts (a very unattractive scene with a conversation with a scientist, an erotic passage from a room with a sexual simulator ...), without any justification for the existence of these sequences. The actors, led by the clumsy Pattinson, play supremely unsympathetic and annoying characters, most of whom you will learn nothing about, all of the thoughts and meanings are brutally literal, and ninety percent of the film is despairingly about nothing, the end fades into emptiness and even visually is no miracle. There just seems to be no reason to bother watching it at all. A story with this type of theme could definitely be built in a very interesting way, but Claire Denis stomped it into the ground with her forced artistic vision. (14.10.2018)

I've been saying it forever. If you send a bunch of antisocial criminals and former drug addicts beyond the boundaries of known space to approach a black hole within a few years, what can go wrong? I pity the science fiction fans sleeping under posters of Martian, Interstellar, and 2001 who happened to be drawn to the cinema for the latest Claire Denis, because of course if this film isn't about something, it's about technology, logic, physics, or systems and crew arrangements. Space doesn't space here, the crew aren't experienced astronauts, the cockpit probably looks less futuristic than your office. And in all of this, there are individuals wandering around, incompetent even within the confines of their home planet, let alone on a voyage of discovery beyond the unknown. But Claire Denis' frequent theme, namely humanity driven to its very animal nature, finally works in this setting. Even including the uncomfortable naturalism. In any case, the question of whether there can be redemption for those who find the Earth insufficient, bleak, repulsive, and empty, deep beyond its borders, is not answered in a warm way. The problem, according to her, is with existence itself. Hence the crew's main (and only surviving) character, Monte, who has decided to turn to asceticism. Anyway, legend has it that there's a movie in which Mia Goth is actually clothed at all times. Everyone talks about it, some say they've even seen it, but no one can put their finger on exactly which one it is. (26.07.2019)