in space, no-one can hear u scream
GUESS WHO’S BACK.
Hi friends, it me, ur fave hot mess cultural critic [self-styled].
Sorry 4 bein awol but i have been busy!!! Doin things!! Seein people!! Playin Sims 4!! U kno how it is.
One of the Things What I Did recently is this piece of ~~embedded criticism~~ (ooh); I went to Bristol, I ate lots of skittles, my accommodation fell through and I seriously considered sleeping in my car, it was an exciting time, i felt Youthful and Alive. (Fret not, I was rescued and spent the rest of my nights in Bath watching Pride and Prejudice (2005) and eating pizza.) U can read the review here on Medium.
Mostly this month i just Consumed Content, as is the modern way of life. If u follow me on twitter / instagram then u may have already seen my lil spreadsheet of content, but if not, u can see here everything i read / watched / ~~absorbed~~ in May.
One of the things I absorbed this month was Claire Denis’ new film High Life, which I mostly watched out of obstinacy (a man at work told me I would hate it and u know nothing gets me motivated like Proving People Wrong); i am delighted to report that i Loved! It! and will be gleefully fighting about it with said man next week.
Before I went to see the film, I read Hannah Paveck’s review in Another Gaze (plug: in case ur new here, I wrote an essay on female adolescence (what else) and suburban violence in Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides for Another Gaze issue 2, which u cannot read online but u can purchase a copy of the journal or ask me for a pdf). I think i would have liked the film anyway, but Hannah’s review nicely set me up to think about it in terms of one of my favourite topics: the relationality of the self & how we construct ourselves in conversation with others. And i had SO MANY thoughts about these things that I feel the need to write them all down and tease them out properly (also so i can prepare for my argument w/ richard @ work tbh), so this newsletter is going to be a delightful divergence from tradition, because it is for once not about theatre. Enjoy. (spoilers)
Claire Denis’s latest film, High Life, opens with an exchange of voices: the cry of a baby, Willow, and the murmuring “dada” of her father Monte (Robert Pattinson), attempting to comfort his daughter over a video monitor. This exchange directs attention toward the nature of the voice: that we are relational beings is signalled in that very “first cry of the infant – an invoking that unknowingly entrusts itself to a voice that responds.” The opening sequence makes it clear the two of them are alone, that there is no other voice.
This is the beginning of Hannah’s review, and although she then goes on to talk about bodies and violation and “worlding” which i think is an excellent word / concept, it’s this beginning that really stuck with me and shaped how I watched the film. From the beginning of the film, as she says, we’re aware of this relationality, the way that the act of speech assumes a listener and even a response. Babies are completely vulnerable, assuming that they are going to be heard and cared for – when they cry, it is safe in the belief that someone will hear and come running. It’s only later in life that we learn that this isn’t the case.
Throughout the present-day sections of the film (it’s set in the future, but I mean the non-flashback parts; present-day in terms of narrative time), Monte speaks to Willow as though she can understand him, as though she can speak back. When the film begins, Willow is pre-verbal, or just on the verge of verbal; she is an infant, literally – “infant” comes from Latin infans, “unable to speak”. Monte talks to her anyway, though, and her gurgled responses highlight the importance of the act of response, just like the act of speech; as long as you say something, you prevent silence, you stave off the encroaching void (which is of course literalised in this sci-fi film about approaching a black hole).
When Monte adds to the captain’s log, which he must do every twenty-four hours to keep the life-support systems online, he speaks rather than types. The messages are transcribed using some kind of speech-to-text software, but again the act of speech is foregrounded. In this case, it’s impossible to know whether anyone does or can hear them, but the completion of the act is enough to get a computerised response, at least; speech keeps Monte and Willow alive. A lot of the film is accompanied by Monte’s voice-over narration – it was unclear to me whether he was speaking directly to the viewer, or to Willow, or whether we’re hearing his thoughts, but I don’t think it really matters. Again, the act of speech is privileged as a method of communication; Monte’s story is constructed in the telling of it. Although he destroys the records pertaining to his life on Earth, and those of the other crew members, he continues to tell his story, but chooses to do so verbally rather than letting others control the narrative.
Juliette Binoche’s character, Dibs (whom we only see in flashback), is terrifying in part because of her self-sufficiency; her refusal to submit to the power relationships exert. She is the onboard doctor, and the only real authority figure (there is a captain, and a pilot, but neither of them wields as much power as Dibs). The fact that she fills this unique position would separate her anyway, but she also is – or at least claims to be – a different kind of criminal to the others, insisting that her crime is the only one “worthy of the name”. We later learn that this crime was murdering her husband and children; while she dispatched the husband with a knife, the children were suffocated – a method of murder which is telling, I think, another gesture towards the power of speech and the horror of silence/ing. Dibs performs gruesome medical experiments on the crew, sedates them, rapes Monte, and impregnates Boyse with his semen without either of their knowledge. Immediately after Willow’s birth (the product of this artificial insemination), Boyse is shown alone, naked, covered in milk, in a visceral and moving portrait of a mother whose child has been taken from her – there is a notable absence at her side when she curls up on the bed, the white sheet drawing attention to the empty space in a visual argument against Dibs’ behaviour, which is underscored by a cut directly to the usurping Dibs holding baby Willow.
Interested in control, rather than collaboration, Dibs says at one point that her goal is “perfection”. She later describes Willow as “perfect”: she is a great scientific achievement, the first baby born on the ship not to die of radiation poisoning. It’s also worth noting the secondary meaning of “perfect” as something “absolute, complete” (again from the Latin: per, “through, completely” and facere, the verb “to do”); Dibs envisions Willow as a human being who is complete in and of herself, who doesn’t rely on others, who exists beyond relationships in the sterile, self-contained environment of the spaceship. This is, of course, not the case: not only does Willow seem to develop a good relationship with Monte as she grows up, but the ship itself is nowhere near sterile: it is often cluttered, and there are frequent leakages – of soap, water, vapour, and bodily fluids. Rather than being a sleek science fiction vision in chrome, the ship is a messy place where boundaries are constantly crossed and things, and people, leak into one another. Furthermore, although those on the ship have no contact with Earth, they still receive fragments of broadcasts, as though someone back home is trying to communicate with them, even across the impossible vastness of outer space.
While he develops a touching friendship with Tcherny, Monte for the most part keeps to himself in the flashback scenes, refusing, for example, Dibs’ sexual advances. It is revealed that he killed a friend over a dog when he was younger; there’s a sense, perhaps, of misplaced empathy: connections gone askew, privileging the dog over relationships with other humans. It is Willow who draws him out, as a consequence of her extreme vulnerability, forcing him to go beyond his established boundaries to look after her (tenderness, attention, etc). Others of the crew resort to more violent means of connection, including attempted rape. Hannah also writes in Another Gaze about Denis’s “attention to France’s colonial legacy”, and I think the way characters like Ettore and Dibs pervert this desire for connection into one for control and invasion – violating the bodies of Boyse and Monte – reflects this concern.
The film foregrounds the human capacity for exploration, seeking new connections, locations, ways of living. While this optimistic desire is misdirected in Dibs and Ettore, resulting in attempts to control and colonise other bodies, in (adult) Monte and Willow the impulse is untainted. Monte considers killing Willow as a baby (and then himself), telling himself that to do so would be merciful, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Not only would he be capable of doing so – having killed his friend – but he wouldn’t even need to “drown [her] like a kitten”, as he suggests, because the life support systems need to be re-triggered every twenty-four hours; he could just let them be turned off, and passively commit himself and Willow to death. By having Monte wonder aloud what to do, Denis makes explicit this constant re-commitment to life; we are to understand that every twenty-four hours for all the years they spend on the ship, Monte makes the call to keep them both alive, against all hope. He opts for the potential for connection and love over the definite absence of either; for exploring the unknown over resigning them to death.
Although Willow resists connection when they first sight another ship – telling Monte that they “don’t need help” when he suggests they dock with the other ship because there might be people on board who can help them – this seems to only be a one-way stemming of the flow of empathy; when Monte boards the other ship and discovers only feral dogs on board, she begs him to bring one back with him because it would be “cruel” to leave them: Willow doesn’t need help, but she wants to help others. She is curious about her origins – understandably – and is disappointed when Monte destroys the records, cutting off her access to his and Boyse’s pasts. She asks him whether she looks like Boyse, seeking a connection with her mother even after death. At one point, he finds her praying:
MONTE: What are you doing?
WILLOW: Praying.
MONTE: You know a god to pray to? What god are you praying to?
WILLOW: I saw a god in some of the random images from Earth. I just wanted to know what they feel.
Willow’s desire to connect with people on Earth by “feel[ing] what they feel” (alongside, perhaps, an unacknowledged desire to explore religion for herself) is represented by prayer, another act of speech. Despite Monte being the only other human being Willow has ever known, she feels empathy, or a desire to feel empathy, by sharing the feelings of those on Earth. Once again, the characters on the ship choose to venture outside their sphere to discover and connect with people, worlds, beyond.
Space, in High Life, is predominantly depicted as black, a yawning absence; we do catch glimpses of a gorgeous, intricate cosmos, but for the most part space is dark and unknowable. What does it mean then, Denis asks, to speak into the void? At the very beginning of the film, Monte drops his tool when working on the outside of the ship and it disappears into the blackness, without even a sound. In spite of this abyss that surrounds them, Monte, and later Willow, both reach towards hope, love, and vulnerability; defiant in the face of the void. While Monte, before Willow’s birth, exhibits the same kind of violent desire for control as Dibs and Ettore (in killing his friend), her arrival on the ship heralds a new chance for him. The film is concerned with making new – notably in the custom of “recycling” prisoners as astronauts – and Willow’s birth gives Monte the chance to re-wire his empathy, to choose tenderness over dominance, as he does. Although he has power over Willow, we never see him exploit it (although controversial, the decision not to censor Willow’s naked body as a baby underlines Monte’s tenderness; the potential for abuse is obvious).
The film ends with Willow and Monte entering the black hole in a shuttle. As in the beginning, it is just the two of them, alone together. Although Monte is in charge, he doesn’t force Willow; again, they are in dialogue, participating in a shared desire for exploration and discovery. Set against the epic backdrop of the black hole, the final exchange between Monte and Willow underscores the film’s preoccupations with exploration, hope, and communication:
MONTE: Shall we?
WILLOW: Yes.