High Life
Short description
Monte and his young daughter Willow are alone aboard a damaged spacecraft, drifting far beyond the solar system. They were not always alone: the ship was crewed by death-row inmates who had agreed to take part in a scientific mission in exchange for their freedom, travelling toward the black hole nearest to Earth. One by one the others are gone, and Monte must raise and protect his child as the vessel continues on its course toward the black hole.
Claire Denis directed and co-wrote the film, the eleventh of the fifteen features she has directed in chronological order, following Let the Sunshine In and preceding Stars at Noon. Robert Pattinson plays Monte, with Juliette Binoche as Dibs, Mia Goth as Boyse, André 3000 as Tcherny, Agata Buzek as Nansen and Lars Eidinger as Chandra among the cast of twenty-four.
The film was released on 26 September 2018 and runs 113 minutes. Made for about 9 million US dollars, it took roughly 2 million dollars at the worldwide box office. Audiences have been mixed: it holds 5.5 out of 10 on IMDb from around 1,500 votes and 5.7 out of 10 on TMDB from about 1,266 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.4 out of 10 from 235 reviews sits well above those viewer scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Robert Pattinson was already acquainted with 13-month-old Scarlett Lindsey, who plays his daughter Willow. She is the daughter of his old friend, musician Sam Bradley, whom the actor had known since school days in London. Initially, twins were cast in the role, but two days before filming began, Pattinson became convinced that it wouldn’t work – the girls started crying as soon as he picked them up and were terribly frightened whenever their mother left the set. Literally the night before filming began, Pattinson had the idea to turn to Bradley.
- The plot is based on a real scientific theory. The goal of the flight to the black hole is to master the Penrose Process. Sir Roger Penrose's theory suggests the possibility of extracting energy from black holes.
- The effect accompanying the disappearance of Mia Goth's character into a black hole is called spaghettification (this is an astrophysical term meaning the strong stretching of objects vertically and horizontally caused by a large tidal force in a very powerful, inhomogeneous gravitational field). It was first described by Stephen Hawking.
- The director's cut of the film has a runtime of 137 minutes.
- The idea of a baby being born during a space voyage came to director Claire Denis when she read about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), who first proposed this idea for use in space exploration research.
- Claire Denis had been considering this project as early as 2002. At that time, she hoped to cast Vincent Gallo in the lead role, but the producers rejected the idea. Denis wrote the script with Philip Seymour Hoffman in mind, but he passed away in 2014. Soon after, Robert Pattinson became interested in the project, but Denis initially thought he was too young. The actor remained hopeful about working with Denis and eventually landed the lead role.
- The spaceship mentioned in the film spent 6,750 days (or 18 years) on its journey. On Earth, 76,864 days (or 210 years) passed during that time.
- The idea for the film came to Claire Denis when she jokingly told Vincent Gallo during filming, «You're getting on my nerves. We should make a film where you're alone in space.»
- Robert Pattinson saw Claire Denis’s war drama *White Material* (2009), which thrilled him. As an avid film buff, he rewatched all of the director’s films and realized he really wanted to work with her.
- This is Claire Denis’s first film in English – she previously shot her 13 feature films in French. According to the director, she simply couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of people on a space voyage speaking in anything other than English or Russian, but French.
- Monte was imprisoned for a murder he committed as a child. According to Claire Denis, his story is based on the 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bugler, committed by two ten-year-old boys who were convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison each. They became the youngest convicted murderers of the 20th century.
- Anxious and nervous before his first meeting with Claire Denis, Robert Pattinson, in his own words, studied string theory and black holes in online articles, and also tried to find an explanation for the fact that his character does not age during space flight.
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