Well, this is certainly a change of pace from what sci-fi
space flicks have been lately. Writer/director Claire Denis’ first step into
English-language cinema finds her looking at all the monumental idealism baked
into features like Interstellar and The Martian, and questioning whether such
things would really play out that way. The result of that is a very different,
very moody, very fucking depressing take on the isolated-in-space thriller.
For one, the notion of sending our best and brightest to the
stars? You’re not going to find that here. Instead, we get an example of how
treating fellow humans as expendable progresses into the space age, showing
Robert Pattinson’s Monte and his daughter Willow as the last survivors of a
mission to collect energy from a black hole. All of the passengers, Monte
included, are prisoners on death row who were offered the mission as a
substitute for their sentence, as if staring into the ultimate death sentence
of the cosmos on a regular basis was a better idea.
The film’s non-linear narrative starts with Monte as Space
Dad, and what comes after on-screen is basically the mystery of how he wound up
being the only person left… along with where Willow came from. The presentation
definitely takes some getting used to, but once it locks in, it slowly but
surely turns into the antithesis of the typical optimism that give stories of
this variety their push. Rather than showing space travel as a chance for
humanity to band together, it’s presented as just another example of the human
survival instinct in action, putting one’s own preservation above that of all
others.
This also plays into what becomes the film’s main thematic
focus, and the biggest diversion from the genre’s norms: This is easily one of
the horniest space movies ever made. The need for some kind of sexual
gratification is at the heart of how the ship operates, between The Box, a room
on the ship that the passengers use to relieve those urges (complete with semen
pouring out of a pipe after each session, because JISM… IN… SPAAAAAAAAAACE) and
Juliette Binoche’s mad scientist Dibs’ attempts to artificially inseminate half
of the crew with the other half of the crew’s genetic material, it taps into an
element of humanity’s needs beyond our atmosphere that hasn’t really gotten
this much focus before.
Of course, describing this film’s tone as simple horniness
feels kind of gross because its approach to the old genital IKEA instructions
is a lot less… consensual than that. Dibs’ experiments range from collecting
samples from the men (and most likely from the run-off pipe of The Box) to raping
the crew members and violating their bodies while they sleep to make them
conceive. She’s not the only one taking what isn’t hers to take on this
ship either, as Ewan Mitchell’s Ettore ends up attempting the same with Mia
Goth’s Boyse. Fucking hell, I don’t know how exactly an actor gets typecast as
the victim of sexual abuse in weird-ass films, but between this, A Cure For Wellness and Nymphomania, that seems to be where Mia is.
As a result of this… thing that is astoundingly difficult to
watch, it makes the threat of outer space almost seem like a mercy. Like how
being crushed by the gravitational force of a black hole is preferable to being
stuck on a ship where one’s body isn’t safe even as they’re asleep. It’s a
cosmic indictment of humanity’s base urges, with Monte’s celibate ‘monk’
serving as the main push-back against said indictment, and for as horrifying as
it is to watch unfold in shuffled real-time, the visuals and musical score end
up making it a lot less grungy than the above details would indicate.
For a sub-genre that is continuing to be used for tentpole
Oscar-chasing cinema, I honestly kind of admire this film for being so
out-there and so daring in its approach. I’ll be admiring it from as far away
as possible, but admire it nonetheless.
No comments:
Post a Comment