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High Life

#11
Secular Sanity Offline
(Jun 20, 2020 04:43 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: P in S was obviously a social commentary on sexism, misogyny and the rights of women. Using space travel to bring attention to the plight of depraved and deprived psychos imprisoned along with their sex toys isn’t as much of a stretch from the Muppets IMHO. On one hand we have cartoon characters acting out real human indignities and on the other humans acting out cartoonish scenarios. But I’m only going on what I’m reading from you guys, I haven’t watched the movie nor do I intend to. 

There’s only one reason why I keep it simple. Just sayin’.

Pigs in Space was a parody, Zinman.

Claire Denis is a 74-year-old French director. C C’s explanation offers some historical background on the French pronatalist politics and their intensive surveillance of the female reproductive system. At one time, their numbers were dropping and while this preoccupation with population is not unique to France, its intensity was.

See "Sexuality, Sex Difference and the Cult of Modern Love in the French Third Republic" by Robert A. Nye

I enjoy exploring the subtleties of the directors. For example…
…her tactile scenes. In other words, how our bodies move through the environment.

Terrance Mallick is another one that contibutes texture visuals and tactile. Some have described Terrance Mallick’s characters as always reaching for something beyond. That’s how I feel when I’m exploring. I’m always in search of something, something unusual, a rock, an animal or a beautiful spot, perhaps.

Space travel and group interaction itself is facinating. I’ve been on backpacking adventures with small groups before. The last one, a friend of mine was playing matchmaker. She invited two of her friends that were newly divorced. The woman was clearly not interested and I don’t blame her one bit. He was a non-know-it-all. This guy would partake in all the food offerings but never once offered anything of his own. It was 28 miles up a steep hill and we had to get to the top before nightfall. We had to walk on a fallen tree to cross a dangerous rushing river while carrying 30lb backpacks. I froze and couldn’t do it. One of the guys crossed, drop his off and then came back for mine. He and the others helped us through some of the more sketching terrain several times. This guy was only looking out for himself. I would never go backpacking with him again, much less date him. It was her first time. She ended up falling from a cliff. Now, that did look cartoonish. It was surreal. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt. Just a few cuts and bruises, but it just goes to show you how important cooperation and team work is. In the wild, it’s a must.
 
Look at the anatomy of this scene. Notice how everyone in the background is carrying on as usual. It reminds you of two things. One being, life goes on. Two, how suffering quickly leads to apathy. How value shrinks from the group to the individual. 


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/QiO2BOnDSv0
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#12
Zinjanthropos Offline
That’s my point, expression extremes. There’s more than one way to make a statement on social issues. I have no doubt that comparing this flick to P in S is wrong but it can be done. That I look at film differently than others, I also have no doubt. Do I think I’m alone in that regard.....No.
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#13
Secular Sanity Offline
(Jun 21, 2020 01:08 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: That’s my point, expression extremes. There’s more than one way to make a statement on social issues. I have no doubt that comparing this flick to P in S is wrong but it can be done. That I look at film differently than others, I also have no doubt. Do I think I’m alone in that regard.....No.

*cough* Bullshit! *cough*

Quote:Pigs in Space might have been a better title, as the characters—led by a guy named Monte—are mostly badly behaved convicts thrust into deep space to research black holes (and never to return).

http://www.meiermovies.com/high-life/
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#14
Zinjanthropos Offline
This Meier guy nailed it. Great minds think alike Big Grin
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#15
C C Offline
(Jun 21, 2020 05:28 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: This Meier guy nailed it. Great minds think alike Big Grin

"The first English-language production by acclaimed French director Claire Denis, High Life is a non-linear, nonsensical, unpleasantly violent, ridiculously pretentious and just plain gross look at long-term space travel. Pigs in Space might have been a better title, as the characters – led by a guy named Monte (Robert Pattinson) – are mostly badly behaved convicts thrust into deep space to research black holes (and never to return). [...] Why is this futuristic society interested in sending an untrained and undisciplined crew across the galaxy to harness the energy of a black hole? They are already traveling at close to the speed of light in an enormous ship, which means Earthlings have probably mastered cold fusion. Therefore, no more energy problems. "


I don't know why everybody keeps forgetting the ship with dogs. Guinea pigs, yes, but swine have never been launched into space. (List of animals in space.) Dogs aren't hogs, but the results are probably similar, as with human cast-offs of society shot into the void to see what happens. Wink

The whole Star Trek franchise and most speculative fiction shows and movies are burgeoning with technological inconsistencies. (It's unavodable, not the least do to the current human audience not being able to relate to drama-less posthumans, cyborgs, robots, and spaceships which do not require biological crews.) The ending is no more goofier than the near-ending of Interstellar, a film which had Kip Thorne as its physics consultant. In turn, "High Life" had Aurélien Barrau as its physics guy.

Finally, how many times must it be mentioned that it's a Euro flick? You expect logic to be intermittently sacrificed for parable, pathos, and elan when walking into those things. It's a continent filled with inexplicables like being intellectually passionate about Jerry Lewis. In terms of futuristic predictions, it was inevitable that the UK (as part of the Anglophone world) would exit from the EU eventually. Wink

Ted Honderich: "One thinks of French philosophy [continental philosophy, PoMo, etc] that it aspires to the condition of literature or the condition of art, and that English and American philosophy aspires to the condition of science. French philosophy, one thinks of as picking up an idea and running with it, possibly into a nearby brick wall or over a local cliff, or something like that." --said during a BBC radio program back in the '90s
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#16
Zinjanthropos Offline
My first thought on the movie was why many billions of dollars would be spent developing the spacecraft just so psychos could ride in it. Things on Earth must be so bad that it was deemed more important that this fantastic machine be used to transport crazy people to some place, I don’t know where. The only thing you can do with that movie is to make the director look like she’s an artistic genius instead of one of the spacecraft crew members.

Unless the audience can be convinced it’s art then the film is worthless. We in Canada have a perfect example of what I’m talking about in our National Art Gallery in Ottawa. A painting purchased for $1.8million in 1967 our centennial year. Despite displaying it upside down for a while ( Most can’t tell the difference) the painting consists of 3 vertical stripes 18 feet high. Worth around $40m now as long as it’s still art. Brief wiki article:

Quote:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire
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#17
C C Offline
(Jun 22, 2020 03:15 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: My first thought on the movie was why many billions of dollars would be spent developing the spacecraft just so psychos could ride in it. Things on Earth must be so bad that it was deemed more important that this fantastic machine be used to transport crazy people to some place, I don’t know where.

Exactly. What country in history ever sent convicts to settle a dangerous and untamed frontier? Or wasted expensive rockets on nothing but animals? Quite ridiculous! Certainly there have never been any popular, fictional films before that used convicts for important missions. Wink

Quote:The only thing you can do with that movie is to make the director look like she’s an artistic genius instead of one of the spacecraft crew members.

Considering the scores of money-making movie "blockbusters" filled with repetitive explosions and crashes, car chases and cartoon-like fight scenes that would be impossible in real life, ordinary humans with an amazing talent for dodging machine-gun fire, and characters dressed in weird costumes with pseudoscience superpowers... With those movies also brimming with loony ideas and plot inconsistencies in between those events...

Considering that mountain of malarkey... Caire Denis is doing pretty good with her unforgivable selection for a spaceship crew. (How dare she commit such an outrage!) Yeah, when the average standard you're compared to today is troglodyte level, then I'd certainly hope she'd get a few points for being slightly brighter or even get mistaken for a genius. Especially since she's not in that other half of the marketing business that hauls in the grand moolah from us suckers Slippin' Jimmy style. Wink

Quote:Unless the audience can be convinced it’s art then the film is worthless.

Not at all. Moviegoers the world over for circa 27 years have spent billions of dollars to watch films in a franchise about a dinosaur theme park that keeps being rebuilt, and visitors flocking to see it again no matter how many times it goes catastrophically haywire. It's not classed as "ART" art despite the incredibly unrealistic storyline. And a massive, real-life global audience pays to see this same idiocy over and over. Aside from the possibility of haute pretentiousness, the National Gallery of Canada may not be much different in its choices at times than you, me or other persons on the street -- they've just got more money to blow on something stupid. Wink
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#18
Zinjanthropos Offline
Big Grin
I get it CC. You missed the part where only good guys shoot straight and the German Army did all their fighting while standing in the open. Repetitive plots and use of prisoners is so old that I’m surprised an artistically gifted director would kowtow to copy it.

I think everyone knows about Australia but did the cons pilot the boats that took them there?

Thanks for touching on Big Money. It’s a business. The PR/Ad dept also gets kudos for putting whatever spin they can on a movie to sell tickets. Are there other posters for this flick? With cleavage perhaps? A horrified expression?Big Grin All I see is head shots or heads in space helmets.

Was Claire Denis used by production company in the hopes that her name might save the day? 

Having fun
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#19
C C Offline
(Jun 22, 2020 01:47 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [...] Having fun

Clearly. A person receives an OBF and doesn't discover the note at the bottom of the package until after examining or trying out the contents. "Having fun... April Fool's Day!" Wink
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