High Life

All I can say is that it's a pleasure to have my reviewing faculties blown and my psyche splintered by this master filmmaker.

There is much of Tarkovsky's Solaris in the main body and the flashbacks... could be lifted straight from the same director's Stalker. High Life is, however, stuffed with Denis' characteristic philosophical derangement.

It goes out into the universe to look in...it is first and foremost a film by Claire Denis.

High Life will send you back out into the world with a totally new idea of what black holes symbolize. It is an elliptical film, yes, because it will answer only the questions that you did not think to ask.

Pattinson is as subtle, exacting and unpredictable as he's ever been, transmitting bone-deep loneliness and resigned fatalism with very little dialogue to help him.

It's heavy, angry stuff. A film that lashes out at humankind as a species of grunting thugs entirely at the mercy of the procreative impulse. It ends with an uncharacteristic touch of optimism, but it's little and late. You'll need a stiff drink.

Composed of equal parts mystery, thriller and speculative fiction, High Life starts off slowly but rewards patience, gradually working towards a finale which weaves elements of Interstellar and 2001: A Space Odyssey into something uniquely Claire Denis.

It may be too lofty to call High Life a microcosm of humanity; then again, it may not be. Denis seems to liken the isolation of a few people trapped on a ship hurtling through space to the entire human experience.

Episode 37: Edge of Tomorrow / Forbidden Planet / High Life

With each thread you find yourself trying to unravel, Denis stays just on the opaque end of decipherable...for sci-fi diehards that read about a big movie star in a new space movie, it's definitely something other than what you'd expect.