https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4827558/
From the IMDb Trivia section, direct quotes from Claire Denis that help to explain some of the film's elements
Claire Denis: "The film is about sexuality, not sex. Sensuality, not pornography. Sexuality is about fluids. As soon as sexuality stirs within us, we know it's all about fluids - blood, sperm, etc. I thought if I wanted that fluid subtext to work, we had to reduce the sex act to masturbation. I forbade myself any naked scenes. No erect cocks, no gaping pussies. We did it another way - High Life speaks only of desire and of fluids. The film shows many taboos - about our own bodies, the taboos of intimacy, and the taboo around, of course, incest. It's a taboo, but it exists."
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Claire Denis about the spaceship: "I learned, that when you leave the solar system, there is zero resistance, so the spaceship can be any shape as long as it is equipped with an energy source to keep it moving. The missile-like aerodynamic shape becomes useless or absurd. So I said a parallelepiped rectangle is fine. In modern science fiction they use the NASA style in every single movie, everything's white and shiny and clean, very militaristic. I wanted exactly the opposite, I wanted it to stay a jail. I wanted everything, even the wall, to be dull, beige and not white. We copied a uniform from a Russian cosmonaut that makes the passengers look more like prisoners."
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Monte is imprisoned because he committed a murder back in his childhood. Claire Denis stated that his backstory is loosely based on the 1993 murder case of two-year old James Bulger, who was murdered by two just 10-year old boys who were found guilty and sentenced to 15 years, becoming the youngest convicted murderers of the 20th century. Denis about the death row inmates in the film: "I was thinking 'What is right? To be killed immediately or to wait on an uncertain hope? I once read about the state of Texas, where someone was complaining about the cost of death row, saying 'Why are these people not working? We feed them. It's unfair.' That's how the idea of using them as guinea pigs came. I can't say it's a futuristic idea because people who serve no use for society anymore, they are trash. So a lot of people are used. There are people who have to sell their kidney in order to survive. This is not science fiction, this is true and happens on earth. I just put it in space."
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The original script was only 30 pages long and unconvential in the sense that unlike normal scripts, it wasn't the story itself but instead only the description of a few key scenes and scientific facts like the Penrose Process.
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The Penrose process (also called Penrose mechanism) is theorised by Roger Penrose as a means whereby energy can be extracted from a rotating black hole.[1][2] That extraction can occur if the rotational energy of the black hole is located not inside the event horizon but outside in a region of the Kerr spacetime called the ergosphere in which any particle is necessarily propelled in locomotive concurrence with the rotating spacetime. All objects in the ergosphere become dragged by a rotating spacetime.
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Dr. Dibs is based on Medea, a Greek tragedy written by Euripides, who revenges her husband by murdering her own children and his new wife.
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When filming began, the final script was just a few pages long with was only Denis's vision for the film. It was described as 'unusual' and 'quite skeletal' by actors and producers. According to the producers, "the script took shape as we were filming. There were meetings when actors wanted to get a handle on characters, were confused and they wanted to know more about how space works. We had astro-physicists come down to talk with them. Claire [Denis] purposefully didn't need her performers to understand every beat. Part of this movie is about the unknown and about characters who don't necessarily understand why they are where they are."
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Claire Denis confirmed that the graphic of the galaxy shown at 01:11 hours runtime after Dr. Dibs inseminates Boyse represents her womb. It's a replica/ visualization of the Orion Nebula; an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen and helium located in the Milky Way. It is the brightest nebula visible from earth and can be seen with the naked eye in the night sky.
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Until the film's end, the ship has been in space for 6750 days (18 years), which equals to 76864 days (210 years) on earth.
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Claire Denis about the films end: "There was no other ending for me. Never. For me, there is hope in that ending, it's not sad. I thought they were going somewhere, and that somewhere was mysterious -- a place nobody has been before. But it doesn't mean to me that they're dying. When Monte says to his daughter, 'Shall we?', to me it doesn't mean 'Shall we die?'. To me, 'Shall we?' is what you ask when you're about to dance with someone."
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Claire Denis about the yellow horizon light at the films end representing the singularity of a black hole invented by Olafur Eliasson: "What inspired me most was the golden, yellow light he invented. It is what you find if you see inside a black hole. It is extraordinary when human skin is in this light -- it loses color and becomes bronze. It is almost a clinical transformation. The end shot is not digital -- this is when it opens up to be completely white. This contrasts with the rest of the film: the reddish uniform for the prisoners. This goes against usual science fiction, with its shiny whiteness that suggests purity, conquest, glory. I wanted a darker hue, a shadow."
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Claire Denis about the yellow horizon light at the films end representing the singularity of a black hole invented by Olafur Eliasson: "What inspired me most was the golden, yellow light he invented. It is what you find if you see inside a black hole. It is extraordinary when human skin is in this light -- it loses color and becomes bronze. It is almost a clinical transformation. The end shot is not digital -- this is when it opens up to be completely white. This contrasts with the rest of the film: the reddish uniform for the prisoners. This goes against usual science fiction, with its shiny whiteness that suggests purity, conquest, glory. I wanted a darker hue, a shadow."
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