1One shot from Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013) allows us to catch a glimpse of Shariff’s shattered face – the third member of the expedition led by Doctors Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Kowalski (George Clooney) indeed had his space helmet broken by drifting debris, which also ripped off most of his face. What makes the image memorable is not the visible blood and gore effects, but the fact that his face is no longer recognizably human. Although in the narrative he has only been hit a moment ago, the violence of the shock and the hostility of the interstellar void have already turned his face into something almost non-human. The story’s seemingly perfect, pure environment ended up corrupting the character’s facial features, even post-mortem. This seems to challenge a conception one may have regarding stories set in outer space: as empty as the setting may seem, as sleek and unbreachable as the spaceships and spacesuits may look, this sense of purity and serenity is potentially one debris away from being corrupted, thus revealing an unsuspected impurity and complexity.
2In view of this parallel between human space travel and a both bodily and visual corruption, two films seem to stand out as an exploration of what human presence in space can lead to: Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) and Claire Denis’s High Life (2018). Both works indeed present us with a vision of groups or individuals being forced to (co)exist in outer space for a certain amount of time, whether it be in the confinement of a spaceship in High Life or in the Martian desert in The Martian. Through the themes of survival, reproduction and cultivation, the two films thus represent the multiple and diversely corrupting interaction possible between the characters and a more or less hostile environment, questioning the both corrupt and corrupting quality of bodies in space. From a visual standpoint, they also seem to invoke the pioneering myth inherent in the representation of new – thus allegedly virgin – spaces, bringing them semantically close to the Western genre.
- 1 Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film (Rutgers University Press, 1997 (...)
3Set in 2035, The Martian focuses on the struggle for survival of astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon), left for dead on the Red Planet after a storm led his crew to urgently escape Mars. Waking up on a deserted planet, with limited resources and oxygen, Mark is forced to find a way to survive by himself in a hostile environment, while waiting and hoping for a rescue team. Meanwhile, team Ares IV on the one hand, led by Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), and NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) on the other, try and collaborate to save his life. High Life seems to be set in a more distant future, in which death row inmates are sent on an exploration mission to discover scientific data about black holes. The film follows the crew along their near suicidal space journey, focusing primarily on Monte (Robert Pattinson), a young father whose daughter Willow (Jessie Ross / Mia Goth) was born on the ship, and Dibs (Juliette Binoche), a witch-doctor who seems to rule the entire crew. It might be suggested here that the multiplication of characters and plotlines in The Martian makes it easier for the images to be corrupted, whether it be through flashbacks or narrative juxtaposition. On the contrary, the huis-clos structure and apparent minimalism of High Life may hint at a purer aesthetics. Nevertheless, while these space films might have been thought to allow a cinema of purity, as suggested by Vivian Sobchack’s study of the “purity of the spaceship”1 in space exploration films, the body of both works keeps transforming, experiencing a form of corruption – that is, for better or worse, an alteration. We might then wonder to what extent the representation of lonely characters, uncharted space and social structures in these two films stems in fact from an initial moral and institutional corruption that paves the way for a physical and visual one – and thus, we can wonder how the (impure) politics of space affect the (pure) aesthetics of space.
4I shall first aim at a proper delineation of what can be seen through the term of “corruption” in both films, and the way this conceptual framing challenges the initial assumptions conjured up by the radical opposition of their poetics and economical status. I will then focus on the possibility of purity as displayed by the two films. Attention will then be paid to the way this purity is first and foremost threatened by the human presence, and how the body itself is corrupted in these new spaces. Finally, I shall study the way the images of the films themselves respond to a form of heterogeneity and experience a form of corruption.
5Notwithstanding the potential political and moral corruption evinced by the penitentiary context of Denis’s film, the notion of corruption may seem at odds with space travel and space conquest movies. Thinking of corruption may indeed first and foremost recall a political and social sense of the term, to be found in films rooted in a more specific, earthlier context. We may think for instance of the way Richard Freedman associated the idea of corruption with the explorations of the way different institutions interact and trade goods and money in classical film noir, making the concept inherent in the genre. On the contrary, films relating the exploration of outer space often present us with characters driven by a spirit of adventure, heading to uncharted territories on which no sociopolitical system yet exists – and where, as a result, no institution or power can be corrupted. Science fiction in general, and space fictions in particular, may be thought of as more detached from the issue of corruption than other genres, since they often provide works set at a distance from the earthly institutions and systems represented in film.
6The setting of outer space allows to display what Vivian Sobchack calls “pure spaces,” that is, spaces devoid of any damage or flaw, or any trace of corruption whatsoever. This nevertheless incites us to interrogate the notion of corruption, and thus purity, for the abovementioned example from Gravity shows that bodies can also be damaged in, and by, the interstellar void. The purity Sobchack has in mind is first and foremost visual. It does make sense when taking a closer look at the common representation of outer space, foreign planets and spacecrafts in science fiction, characterized by sleek, monochromous, aseptic visuals, and a form of minimalism that established over the years a bilateral relation between science fiction films and such fields as interior design and architecture. Nevertheless, even this visual purity, that may leave room for corruption at other levels, is ambiguous, for it may well be contradicted by the recurring co-presence of exogenous elements – for instance, the infinite void on the one hand, and manufactured spaceships on the other. Outer space narratives, in that they imply the venture of travelling crews into alien environments, could be considered to that extent as ontologically impure.
- 2 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, (...)
7This is where Mary Douglas’s work on the notions of purity, corruption and pollution in Purity and Danger2 sheds light on our problem. In her questioning of the centrality of purity in the establishment of institutions over the years, Douglas indeed approaches pollution as an en contra phenomenon from which human societies have sought to stay away. Thinking of the most primary sense of pollution as the damage done by human development to nature, it nevertheless appears that space travel often results, in film, in the representation of the pollution of empty spaces, as well as the creation of a heterogenous imaginary in which an initial visual purity is itself “polluted” by exogenous elements. Therefore, the presence of The Martian and High Life’s protagonists in extraterrestrial spaces, whether it be the stratospheres they go through or the Martian planet as explored by Mark Watney, embodies a form of corruption. More specifically, they also represent a form of natural disruption, to be compared with the sociological works on social disruption. If, according among others to Ulrich Beck, social disruption consists in the alteration or complete renewal of a social structure, Charis Kubrin’s study of disruption as social disorganization may echo even more specifically what is at stake in the intrusion of human bodies into assumedly virgin spaces. These bodies and their representation do not alter a pre-established social system, but they reorganize the nature of the spaces visited and displayed, from a visual standpoint but also, diegetically, from a biological one. This essay shall therefore handle corruption by questioning the way the two films develop a poetics of corruption, echoing the inherently corrupt concept of space travel.
- 3 Kathleen Ford, “Corruption of the Body,” The Sewance Review123, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 59-74.
8What is more, the corruption phenomenon is double-edged, since the body also undergoes a form of alteration during their visiting these foreign spaces. Corruption is here to be understood as transformation, for the characters’ bodies, in both films, go through a more or less detailed modification process, implied by their passage through outer space. The short story “Corruption of the Body” by Kathleen Ford3, pointed at this vision of corruption. In its depiction of the discovery of death, as both a reality and an impending feeling, by two young girls, Ford’s story delivers a vision of life as an ever-lasting path to its own end. Corruption is therefore alluded to in its transient, progressive aspect, rather than the quality of a system or entity at a given time. This vision of the “corruption of the body”, named explicitly in Ford’s piece, as a lengthy process, is echoed in an obvious way by the survival aspect of the narrative of The Martian, but it also appears under various forms in High Life, for the protagonists are submitted to a form of double confinement: they are prisoners by virtue of a legal decision, and limited to their spacecraft’s boundaries by the laws of physics. Therefore, the spatial setting acts as an echo to their social status and doubles the constraints to which their bodies must obey.
9Again, the comparison of an action-centered, plot-driven blockbuster and a more contemplative, erratic film may foreshadow, in the first case, the representation of a triumphant, heroic body, managing to overstep the corrupting effects of its new environment, and in the second, a more careful, detailed depiction of the insidious effect of the said environment on the bodies represented. This clear-cut distinction is, of course, to be questioned throughout this discussion, keeping in mind the potential porosity existing between Hollywood productions and independent European art film, especially when they tackle similar narratives and generic identity.
10Before focusing on these potential convergences, it seems important here to specify how the two films differ initially in their modes and economic contexts of production. The Martian is indeed a 108-million-dollar blockbuster, produced by 20th Century Fox and directed by a British director who, in 2015, had already been established as a major Hollywood figure. On the contrary, High Life is an 8-million-dollar independent film, directed by French auteur Claire Denis, and featuring a both English and French-speaking cast (including Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, among others). This economic discrepancy, which destines the films to different market audiences, also has an impact on their poetics, whether it be the representation of outer space, which may rely on the use of costly special effects, itself favored by a higher budget, or the radicalness with which the character’s spatial and social isolation is represented. Scott’s film may be seen, at first sight, as more “corrupt” than Denis’s, insofar as it responds to industrial and ideological norms that apply less significantly to independently-produced films. Both films also depict, in their own way, terrae incognitae. The Martian’s desert is still mostly uncharted and uninhabited, while Denis’s huis-clos in space depicts a miniaturized society, secluded in a jail-like spacecraft, living by its own rules. As a result, the premises bear the promise of an initial state of purity. Although the inmates in Denis’s film are probably criminals, their involvement in the space mission has led to a form of collective identity renewal: in a crew made of criminals, no one stands out as more reprehensible than the others. Therefore, both films step away from terrestrial referentiality, through a partial or absolute solitude that reshuffles the notions of rules and community. Similarly, this feeling of being the first to chart an unknown territory offers a vast possibility for renewal and reinvention.
- 4 J.P. Telotte, “The Tremulous Public Body: Robots, Change, and the Science Fiction Film,” Journal of (...)
11This obsession for the new also paves the way for both films’ concern with the notion of transition and transitive states. While Denis’s prisoners are being taken from one place to another, Mark is supposed to stay on Mars until he is rescued. The abovementioned state of purity therefore seems likely to be challenged and questioned due to this ever-changing situation, and to undergo a process of transformation and corruption. This appears in the films’ very premises. The crew in High Life is comprised of criminals; as to Watney’s presence on Mars, it is an explicit symbol of the American will to pursue space exploration through NASA initiatives – accordingly, his rescue shall depend on both economic and political factors. In each case, the presence of the characters in these strange and pure spaces depends on decisions that were taken by higher powers than them, thus reinstating the notion of institutional coercion and therefore potential corruption. What is more, these powers have a direct effect on their bodies, for they are placed in unknown, hostile environments that are very likely to corrupt their integrity. This paper thus proposes to focus not only on the political and moral corruption, but also on corruption from a more physical standpoint: in effect, bodies are corrupted in these films, as they undergo a transforming, sometimes damaging process. In this regard, I shall rely on JP Telotte’s article “The Tremulous Body,” in which the way bodies are subjected in the science fiction genre is developed, through the depiction of “a public rather than a private body […] an image of man reconfigured and presented as display, a ‘modern body’ not just ‘hollowed’ and ‘double’ but presented and dissected as image”4. The two films do indeed display various ways of showing these bodies, among which a variation in the type of image used – as witnessed by the many computer screens embedded into the shots. Thus, the alteration of bodies is paralleled by that of the image, pointing at a form of visual corruption.
12This isotopy of corruption is to be contrasted with the two films’ obsession with the notion of purity, whether it be represented on screen or implicitly manifested by the poetics and mise-en-scène. The (im)possibility of this purity is consequently an essential place of inquiry, before further questioning the way corruption is embodied in Scott’s and Denis’ films.
- 5 Pierre Eisenreich, « Décors d’un cauchemar eugéniste : Sur quatre films de science-fiction de Ridle (...)
- 6 Tamara Tasevska, “The Colour of the Possible: Olafur Eliasson, and Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Colour-Image’ (...)
13In his review of The Martian for Positif, Pierre Eisenreich stresses how, as opposed to Scott’s earlier science fiction classic Blade Runner and its “over-polluted universe,” the red planet is part of a “near, relatively sanitized future,” in which the “Martian desert” is an “outlet […] of […] warm ochre color”5. Eisenreich links the entire narrative context developed by Scott and Lindelof (adapting Andy Weir’s 2014 eponymous novel) with the visual representation of the planet. The sanitary cleanness of the time in which the plot is set therefore echoes a visual uniformity that pervades the whole film, giving it a form of purity, in which corruption would be embodied by a change in color scheme or natural environment. High Life is characterized by a similar aesthetics of purity. Although there is no “Martian desert” in Denis’s film, a comparable visual purity that could be described as hygienic seems to pervade the spaceship – as object and space. This is an impression that can be found throughout many references of space films, from the immaculate, all-white interiors shown in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) to the use of restless cleaning robots as a comic relief in Andrew Stanton’s Wall.E (2008). Even in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), which develops an imagery of filth and dirt, the hyper-sleep room on which the film opens seems to be a clean, hospital-like haven. As to hygiene, it is even more literal, for many scenes take place in a laboratory bathed in blue light in which Doctor Dibs carries out her experiments. As phrased by Tamara Tasevska in her article about High Life “The Colour of the Possible,” the “colour-saturated interiors”6 seem here to stand for a space devoid of any parasitic elements – that is to say, the seemingly opposed fullness of lightning and hygienic void are actually gathered under the same sense of totality and absoluteness (Fig.1) This isotopy of totality is echoed more metaphorically throughout the dialogues in both films. In each case, the protagonists’ goal is to manifest a form of commonality, pervading both daily habits and longer-term achievements. Whereas in High Life, several references are made to both “All systems” and “All passengers,” reuniting the spacecraft and its human inhabitants in a same entity, the solidarity manifested by the people trying to save Mark in The Martian leads to several assertions of a collective will: “The whole world’s rooting for [him]”, according to NASA executives, while Ares rescue mission’s determination is summed up by Melissa as follows: “We do this together or we don’t.” The implicit of these statements is that no element shall be alienated or isolated from the crew (in High Life) or the population waiting for Mark’s rescue (in The Martian): purity here lies in uniformity, which is echoed by the poetics and art direction of both films.
Figure 1
Dibs (Juliette Binoche), finding new ways to create life.
High Life by Claire Denis – © Alcatraz Films – Pandora – Apocalypse Films
14Purity indeed seems to be first and foremost sensorial and visual, whether it be in the representation of vast landscapes in The Martian or in the enclosed atmosphere that characterizes High Life. It takes the form of a uniform aesthetic identity and a common purpose for all the characters. This heterogeneity is thus the manifestation of a will to build something collectively, starting from scratch, which endows both movie with an aesthetics of discovery and new birth. Without turning their back entirely on the traditional imagery of science fiction, the two films are nevertheless deprived of a certain number of tropes and clichés associated with the genre. This starts with the spaceships themselves, deprived of the extra-evolved forms of artificial intelligence that pervade the genre, from Forbidden Planet to Interstellar. Similarly, no exogenous – “extraterrestrial” – form of life appears, neither is this possibility even mentioned. The relation the characters have with science and technology is also quite similar to what could be found in films set in contemporary contexts: it is neither archaic nor futuristic, and it even appears as a comic relief when Mark tries and establishes a decent audiovisual contact with Planet Earth, making it look like a tentative Skype call between unexperimented people.
- 7 Michel Pastoureau, Blanc : Histoire d’une couleur (Paris: Seuil, 2022).
15This freedom from SF requirements also leads to a focus on more intimate, physical, and biological matters. Near the end of Denis’s film, Dibs finally manages to take hold of Monte’s sperm and to create a child “born” from the otherwise abstinent inmate. Out of pride and admiration, she says: “The child is your daughter. […] For me she’s perfection.” Childbirth, all the more in a barren, empty space, is here depicted as something almost miraculous, and the embodiment of the possibility to keep human creation going in an inhuman environment. The child’s birth is followed by a scene of breastfeeding that reflects this association of literal birth with a form of pure, uncorrupted innocence. In a room with white walls, bathed in white lighting, Boyse, dressed in white, feeds newborn Willow with (unsurprisingly) white milk. That very setting looks like a literal illustration of Michel Pastoureau’s analysis of whiteness as a perpetual reminder of maternal milk and childhood in Western culture7. The shift from homogeneous blue to homogeneous white here adds a symbolical purity to the visual one, a doubling of purity that seems to be offered by the birth. In each case, the notion of uniformity appears through a dominating chromatic hue that leaves no place for other colors; yet, the addition of the white dominance and the archetypical image of the young mother giving her breast for her infant to feed on offer a new image of potential purity among a spaceship otherwise described as a dangerous floating jail.
- 8 Jim Collins, “Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity,” in Film Theory Goe (...)
16Such an elated parenthood remains, in The Martian, out of Mark’s reach. And yet, his sincere, child-like pride when growing the first potatoes in Martian soil also suggests his amazement at the miracle of life, as stressed by his insisting on both the quantity – “400 healthy potato plants” – and the quality – “all natural, organic, Martian-grown potatoes” of his harvest. The exploration of uncharted spaces seems to be an essential and long-awaited step toward a purified relation with natural elements and one’s own capacities for creation. Quite strangely, this echoes the way Jim Collins approached the New Sincerity US movies of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the eponymous chapter from Film Theory Goes to the Movies. “Purposely evading the media-saturated terrain of the present in pursuit of an almost forgotten authenticity […] one of the most interesting contradictions within the New Sincerity [is] that even though the search for lost purity and authenticity may depend on dazzling special effects and the blockbuster budgets they entail, there’s nevertheless a free-floating technophobia”8. Contemporary space films like The Martian or even High Life share few features with the trend Collins analyzes: the “New Sincerity” films were indeed mostly embodied by emergent independent filmmakers of the 1980s and 1990s, like Wes Anderson or Todd Solondz, and not Hollywood blockbusters or European art films. However, this “search for lost purity and authenticity” appears in High Life and The Martian, both narratively and visually. Forgetting about the technical, financial and political realities that led them in outer space, the protagonists of Scott’s and Denis’s films experience a pioneering amazement through activities and achievements much more down to Earth – than Mars or interstellar space. To that extent, and following Mark’s attempt at surviving thanks to, and not in spite of, the Martian environment, the possibility of a harmonious, non-conflictual, ethical life in space is suggested.
17Nevertheless, these seemingly innocent ambitions bear a host of contradictions. Whether it be the obviously near-Eugenic aspects of Doctor Dibs’ experiments with human reproduction, or Watney’s proud assertion that he “colonized Mars” thanks to his potato crops, the quest for new authenticity and pure exploration is in itself a disruptive element in these untamed spaces. However new and pure their achievements may appear, they seem to be elements of corruption in the deserted interstellar void.
- 9 Eisenreich, « Décors d’un cauchemar eugéniste, » 106 (my translation).
- 10 Tasevska, “The Colour of the Possible,” 2.
18French film critic Pierre Eisenreich compares The Martian with Scott’s previous science fiction films, including the Alien prequel Prometheus (2012), in which, according to him, “humanity, rather than being yet another link of the food chain destined to other species, is mostly the creator of new predatory, totalitarian civilizations”9. Human characters, after having been the defenseless victims of an extra-terrestrial being in the 1979’s Alien, are depicted 33 years later as the greedy explorers, eager to devour the virgin spaces they have just discovered, and the initiators of the original horror. As Tasevska puts it, “the garden [in High Life] is tarnished by objects that suggest human presence”10. Indeed, the opening shots of High Life and their multiple views of the said garden perform a gradation from peaceful nature to the incongruous presence of a perused shoe that stands as a manufactured parasite in an otherwise pristine environment (Fig. 2). The close-up of the shoe is itself a corrupting element. Indeed, it is integrated as it is in a series of shots on such natural elements as grown vegetables, and immediately breaks an isotope of thriving life with a piece of manufactured garbage.
Figure 2
A garden inside a spaceship.
High Life by Claire Denis – © Alcatraz Films – Pandora – Apocalypse Films
19This visual corruption can also operate within one same shot, for instance through the images in The Martian that feature Mark’s makeshift basecamp and damaged spacesuit, characterized by filth and cheap repairs. The used shoe and the fragile infrastructures make the human presence all the more disturbing. Not only does their presence itself perturb the space(s) they explore, but the items epitomizing their presence are already obsolete, and have practically become refuse. This corruption seems to be best illustrated in the shots of Denis’s spacecraft’s graffiti-covered walls: whether it be natural spaces or manufactured structures, the humans cannot help degrading the spaces they inhabit. This inherent incompatibility is best expressed by Mark’s final speech, when after having been rescued he explains to wannabe astronauts’ students: “This is space. It doesn’t cooperate. At some point, everything is going to go south on you. […] And you’re gonna say ‘this is it. This is how I end.’” The line does not seem to acknowledge that the problem might have more to do with the presence of humans than the threat embodied by space. Still, it clearly states the double-sided corruption at stake in space travels: these human bodies that corrupt space also undergo a corruption, and a transformation, of their own when confronted to such hostile environments.
- 11 C. Carter Colwell, “Primitivism in the movies of Ridley Scott: Alien & Blade Runner,” in Retrofitti (...)
20In Retrofitting Blade Runner, Carter Colwell describes the arrival of the Nostromo crew on planet LV-426 in Alien as such: “Entering is like entering a whale”11. His description directly conjures up the images of Gepetto and Pinocchio swallowed by Monstro at the end of Carlo Collodi’s 1881 novel, alongside the Biblical figure of Jonas. The organicity of the environment explored is once again put to the fore, emphasizing the parasite-like aspect of the human bodies venturing into it. Nevertheless, it also points out the said environment as an antagonistic entity, in which human bodies can be both literally and metaphorically devoured and digested by the unknown spaces they step in. Interestingly, this image is echoed – and contradicted – by a remark made by the NASA director in The Martian that sounds both rational and unnecessarily cold: “Mark’s not going to decompose, you know.” Because of the atmospheric difference between the Earth and Mars, the isolated astronaut would, in effect not transform as expected if he were to die. In other words, human body, alive or dead, is either destined to be ingested by outer space or remain eternally in a post-mortem stillness. On the one hand, it is bound to be corrupted by his confrontation with interstellar borders, but on the other hand, the impossibility of decomposition constitutes it as an eternal element of pollution, never to disappear, and in that regard comparable to a non-biodegradable piece of waste.
21This transformation seems inevitable even before facing the interstellar void or the new atmosphere of stranger planets, as epitomized by how skinnier and hairier Mark’s body appears after each temporal ellipsis in The Martian. His spatial isolation has long-lasting consequences that show both during his outer expeditions and in the course of the moments he spends in his shelter. Such attention to the transformation undergone by the body is somehow at odds with the form of abstraction that pervades several central space fictions like 2001 or The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983), or even more recently the TV show For All Mankind (Apple TV+, 2019 –) in which the protagonists’ bodies are often hidden by their equipment and reduced to similar-looking figures, with similar-looking clothing and helmets. The Martian takes the opposite way as soon as it begins, as Mark pulls a debris out of his own thorax, reminding us of the body-horror tendency epitomized by Alien’s chest-busting scene. Although the rest of the film abandons the gore sensibility, Mark’s weight-loss and hair-growth are made obvious by the intercutting, which allows the alternation of one sequence with a hairless Mark, one on Earth with the NASA team, and then another sequence featuring a much beardier Mark. The filmic time separating the two physical aspects acts as a reduced equivalent for the diegetic time Mark spends alone on Mars, changing inevitably.
22This is even more blatant in High Life, through the artificial inner space of the spacecraft. The abovementioned permanent play on lighting fulfills a significant role in expressing this physical alienation: Monte’s body indeed seems to change radically from one scene to another, as if the spaceship, more than a means of transportation, had become a second skin that determined the way bodies could look (Fig. 3 and 4).
Figure 3
Monte and Dibs’s bodies, integrated, absorbed and altered by the overwhelmingly blue atmosphere of the ship…
High Life by Claire Denis – © Alcatraz Films – Pandora – Apocalypse Films
Figure 4
… and by the golden dark surroundings of the Black Hole
High Life by Claire Denis – © Alcatraz Films – Pandora – Apocalypse Films
23This is further epitomized by the several shots showing the characters through the plastic curtains surrounding the gardens: every element in this interior can contribute to change the way a body (and object) looks. The motif of the plastic curtain as filter is also particularly present in The Martian: Mark is repeatedly shown through the plastic patches he installed around his makeshift greenhouse. The repetition of this motif and the reminiscence of characters so keen on farming in outer space is also a form of vanity like their plants and potatoes, the human bodies need these greenhouses to thrive and survive. The transformation is not only expressed by the film’s visual; it is also acknowledged by the characters themselves. Although Mark eventually uses his feces and that of the crew as organic fertilizer, his first reaction when opening the sealed matter is sheer disgust. Later in the film, a line from Mark expresses quite directly the effect of low Martian temperatures on his body: “Unfortunately, my balls are frozen.” Similarly, Monte’s sexual abstinence on the spacecraft of High Life has the other members of the crew call him “Mister Blueballs”: rather than a way of questioning the male character’s power, this echoing insistence on testicles evinces the way the body is tested and transformed at its most intimate, whether it be out of extreme weather or isolation.
- 12 Julia Kristeva and John Lechte, “Approaching Abjection,” Oxford Literary Review 5, no. 1/2 (1982): (...)
24Nevertheless, both Mark’s fecal matter and Monte’s semen eventually come handy, whether they be used to grow food or to create life. Thinking back of the way Julia Kristeva associates both these elements to the abject, it seems that their use to utilitarian ends marks an additional step towards abjection – a form of reversal of the “primary repression” she approaches in her work12. In other words, the body and its function are not only corrupted in a transformative way; they are also turned into a means of production: this rationalization may also be a form of corruption. The voiceover uttered by Monte throughout High Life is used in an almost pedagogic way. It allows us, as viewers to better understand the reason why all these people are gathered in the spacecraft. Nevertheless, the text insists a lot on the reification of bodies aboard the ship: “Death row inmates are selected to be used as guinea pigs” can be heard very early in the film; later on, Monte’s voice specifies that these prisoners were made “an offer: to serve science.” The verb “to serve”, here, seems to bear more than just its consecrated use: science, as embodied by Dibs, literally reduces the passengers to a state of servitude. This is particularly obvious and disconcerting in the scene in which Dibs carries Monte’s sperm cautiously to create his daughter. Slowly and discreetly, she crosses different rooms as if holding a stolen jewel. Body functions are turned into merchandise and ways to achieve a specific goal (Fig. 5). The same seems to go with Mark’s makeshift farming on Mars, since he has to make fertilizer out of his crewmates’ and his own fecal matter: as the character summarizes it at the very end of the film, “[he] did in fact survive on a deserted planet by farming on [his] own shit.” What is, for the rest of humanity, a mundane aspect of daily life, is here transformed into an essential parameter for survival. There lies a paradoxical understanding of corruption: an ignoble matter is sublimed into something useful, and yet this is also a way of rendering productive and useful a bodily secretion that would usually go to waste and stay useless. It is therefore a form of rationalization, that makes profit out of anything, including the human body.
Figure 5
Dib’s about to commit semen theft
High Life by Claire Denis – © Alcatraz Films – Pandora – Apocalypse Films
25The corruption seems to pervade language itself. On the lighter side, it is easy to perceive a double-entendre when Mark decides to use his bodily function for farming and says “Let’s science the shit out of it.” However, the alteration of language, through the use of images, seems to pervade both films on a more global scale. Such is the case in High Life and its many associations of the human characters with animalizing images: Dibs calls Boyse a “little pup,” whereas Monte compares his daughter Willow’s teeth to “rodent’s” after having told her he “could just have drowned [her] like a kitten” when she was born. The body parts of the characters are verbally stolen from them, echoing Telotte’s abovementioned notion of the subjection of the body in science fiction: he depicts “a public rather than a private body […] an image of man […] not just ‘hollowed’ and ‘double’ but presented and dissected as image.” In High Life, the image in question is only verbal, but it becomes much more literal in The Martian, for Mark’s body and its survival quickly become a matter of communication, as suggested by the NASA director, who does not want to have to “broadcast pictures of Mark’s dead body to the entire world.” The hero’s death, more than a human tragedy, would therefore lead to damaged images – both the public image of the space institution and the very images shown to the public. This ultimately points to another form of corruption, that of the images, and more specifically of the cinematic image.
- 13 Tasevska, “The Colour of the Possible,” 1, 3.
26The representation of uncharted spaces may stand as promise of unseen images, in so far as the visual references for the Martian landscapes or a laboratory-spacecraft full of prisoners are at least rare, if not inexistent. What is more, the unicity of the décor, whether it be the open-air prison Mark has to confront in The Martian or the literal confinement the prisoners undergo in High Life, paves the way for a form of ipseity – that is, these spaces are not only unique, but they offer a uniform representation, setting a unique aesthetic line for the films. Yet, as Tasevska points out in her article about Denis’s film, “alongside the scenes set on the spaceship, which are filmed digitally, High Life features flashback sequences of stark, wintry landscapes” and the film keeps “shifting between 16mm and HD images”13. As such, the film reaches a form of hybridity at odds with the pure uniformity firstly observed in the first part of this piece. The association of different techniques and formats to different diegetic contexts leads to a difference in the very aspect of the images displayed. In the end, two films seem to coexist within High Life, which both emphasizes the isolation of the space travelers and suggests the achievement of a poetics of impurity. The latter is not manifested in such a radical way in The Martian, despite its narrative predominantly resorting to intercutting between Mark, the NASA headquarters, and the Ares mission.
27This narrative and formal construction could indeed have led to a juxtaposition similar to that of Denis’s film, allowing the blockbuster to experiment through its alternation of plotlines. The isolation of the character, so far away from any trace of known civilization or human life, actually calls for its contre-champ, as if this solitude inherently contained the necessity for the main plotline to be corrupted with images of another nature. However, this hybridity remains exclusively narrative, since the Ares, the NASA quarters and Mark’s Martian life are all represented with similar focuses, framing and sound mixing. That way of smoothing over the potential disparities between the three storylines reaches a form of climax during the central montage sequence of the film, featuring David Bowie’s “Starman.” After having followed one another for fifty minutes, the three settings are brought together in a form of embedded music video, where one same pop song unites the actions performed by characters otherwise separated, creating a common soundscape for all the characters involved. This sequence is not only an ephemeral musical reunion for the three lines of the film: it also is a turning point, given that the rest of the film is edited in a much more classically Hollywood way, with much more regular alternations between the storylines, as opposed to the long bits dedicated to each plotline so far. The sequence therefore announces a form of return to a more traditional narration, in a more homogenous poetics.
28The vast, virgin spaces of The Martian as well as the sealed, sanitized environment of High Life are both subject to corruption in many ways. This is made even more explicit by the purity they seem to epitomize, at least on the surface. Embodied by a pervading uniformity that resonates from the dialogues to the chromatic choices, this purity also seems to appear in a moral way, as evinced by the recurrence of a certain sense of wonder. Both films indeed resort to a poetics of heterogeneity and a form of pioneering spirit that bears the promise of absolutely new experiences. The human bodies represented in spaces not designed for them are nevertheless a disruptive element that affects both the images and the ecosystems they inhabit; conversely, the human body is represented in several transformation processes throughout the films, putting to the fore how these remote encounters lead to a more or less fatal form of corruption. Bodies are indeed tested and tried, and even turned into transitional means and communication images, and images are themselves the symbol of how the aesthetics of the films is itself permanently transformed by what preceded them. The novelty of the experiences both films suggest is nevertheless to be questioned, as regards the way they eventually both give in to a certain form of convention, and fit in the traditional expectations of their generic categories – science fiction and space film.
29The two films share the way they present us with a conquest of space that is yet to succeed – or to fail. Neither The Martian nor High Life indeed imagine the way humanity would settle on Mars. To that extent, they may be compared to other contemporary space travel narratives that actively and/or critically imagine a colonized space. Films like Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) or Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019), which are set in a more remote future, are instances of how American cinema can anticipate a relocation of humanity on outer space environments, whether it be the Moon or artificial stations.
30The two films, like The Martian, are high-budget Hollywood blockbusters that attempt a more or less explicit criticism of US imperialism and the way it duplicates a civilization model onto the new territories that keep being found and made profit of. However, Nolan’s and Gray’s films also have in common how they present colonized space in a highly suggestive way, either at the very end or through short montage sequences. The corrupt and colonial aspect of these exo-societies are addressed in a few lines of dialogues, but it is neither central to the films’ plots nor to their mise-en-scène. As in The Martian, the corrupt aspect of human presence in space is more of an unconscious of the film. In High Life on the other hand, as in Duncan Jones’s comparably low-budget Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009), it is both an explicit motif and thematic and an underlying notion pervading the representation of the spaces explored and the said explorers. Rather than the narrative structure or the multiplicity of characters, it seems that it is ultimately the production context of the films that primarily determines the representation and embodiment of corruption space films display.
- 14 Geoff King, Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood Meets Independent Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009).
31Political and economic corruption, most obviously addressed as a thematic, may therefore also remind us of the underlying economic corruption to be found in the differing way in which these films were produced. However creative and experimental they might be narratively and formally, the need for these productions to respond to a range of aesthetic criteria is visible, whether it be through the reworking of traditional, heterosexual, patriarchal family and conjugal models, or the unquestioned US ideological agenda that guides the conquest of space at its very source. This is made obvious by Vivian Sobchack, who identifies science fiction as the dominant genre in contemporary mainstream Hollywood films, as well as by Geoff King, who explores the zone of ambiguity between Independent US cinema and Hollywood, both as systems of production and as aesthetics14. The case of High Life is more ambiguous, for it does not fall into the abovementioned categories and pertains to a more marginal sphere, no matter the perspective: seen by Hollywood, it is a small-budget film directed by a French art-film director, and from a French perspective, it is one of the rare occurrences of space travel narrative, alongside Proxima (Alice Winocour, 2019) or, in a more metaphorical category, Gagarine (Jérémy Trouilh and Fanny Liatard, 2020). This once again questions the possibility of an uncorrupted film production to tackle such questions as physical, ecological and political image corruption.