In an interview with No Film School, Pattinson and director Claire Denis spoke about the film and its themes. The ship's crew members are all former prisoners who were sold on the idea of escaping Earth in order to serve science, but the ship is really just another prison. "The people controlling everything have no obligation to tell you the rules or anything, so you're living in this environment where everything can change on the dime," Pattinson said. "People can just experiment on you. You try and rebel against things, but you don't really know what's coming at any point and you have no autonomy."
Pattinson's character, Monte, tries to rebel against Dr. Dibs' experiments by refusing to participate. He's the only crew member who stays celibate and avoids the masturbatory "Black Box," which Dibs uses to harvest the crew's genetic material and attempts to impregnate the crew's female members. But like Pattinson said in the interview, rebellion is futile. Dibs simply drugs him, sexually assaults him, and uses his semen to conceive Willow.
Shortly after Willow is born, Dibs dies by suicide, leaving Monte and Willow as the only two survivors on a ship that can't return to Earth. It's an impossible environment in which to raise a child, especially one that was conceived without anyone's consent. And yet, when we first meet Monte, that's exactly what he's doing. Willow is the closest thing Monte has to hope in his situation.
