WIN
Director Shane Carruth delivers a challenging art piece in his second feature film. Eschewing studio trappings for the sake of total creative control, Carruth again spins a dense tale in his own edit-heavy style. Upstream Color requires you to look for the explanations with your eyes and your instincts rather than have them spoken in words. It is an often frustrating task to perform amid a flurry of mesmerizing images and sounds. The explanation may not be satisfying, but the reflection should be.Much of the setup is disturbing: Youths fall in with a sort of drug dealer, and this dealer later forces the product on an unsuspecting person when he fails to sell it. The product has a bizarre, seemingly endless hypnotic effect on the victim, which the dealer takes advantage of to steal as much money as he wants. When the effect wears off, some pretty chilling, skin-crawling craziness happens to the victim involving worms and pigs. If you make it past this point, you will survive the rest of the film.
The next part of the film focuses on the victim wandering through a life shattered by the crime. Another character enters who was also a victim of the same kind of crime. And then there's an almost completely speechless figure who can hear what these victims - and many others - are experiencing by listening to his pen of pigs. The theme of broad interconnected experience between distant people is slowly established as we listen to the victims confide in one another and try to understand how they ended up where they are. They both teeter precariously on the edge of madness, but a breakthrough in their common experience leads them to the answers.
I won't spoil the ending, but the final chapter of the story shows how the drug-like product originates, and how each person involved in the long production chain is connected...likely without being aware of each other or what they are ultimately contributing to.
It's too early for me to be sure I understand this movie completely. In that respect it reminds me of my experience with Shane Carruth's first feature, Primer. To this day I don't follow exactly what is going on in every frame, but I appreciate picking up something new each time and catching clever details sprinkled throughout. I will have to watch Upstream Color again and again before claiming to have a clear understanding. Primer appears to be more of a technical challenge, while Upstream Color offers more of an artistic challenge.
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| The Sampler listens to his pen of pigs |
So why the WIN? I enjoy being challenged with something I don't fully understand but which offers substance. I'm not quick to give up on a puzzle; I'm only dismissive if the puzzle has no substance (like much of what I see, or fail to see, in modern art). Upstream Color carries strong themes of shared human experience and the need for victims to support one another. There are also some enticing possibilities for lively debate regarding what the speechless character (billed as "The Sampler") represents. This is a film built for reflection and debate. It also features impressive artistic concepts and sharp editing techniques which shape an original story. And not to be overlooked is the personal satisfaction I get from seeing familiar sights from the city of Dallas.
There are negatives to quibble over: One character spends most of the time looking dazed and spaced out. While the trauma of the opening crime is understandable, the persistent distant look becomes off-putting and nearly melodramatic. I also couldn't help but think that Carruth has a little Hitchcockian slip in how the male and female victims handle their trauma differently; the woman seems to fall into madness and needs meds and the man to sort it all out. The pendulum does swing back more to the center at the end, but the psychological question marks spring up regardless. Other than that, I don't think there are any other negatives that would make this film a FAIL.
A word of advice: Watching Carruth's previous film Primer may serve its namesake in preparing you for Upstream Color. And if you don't like "pretentious" films, don't waste your time on this one.
And on that note, what is a "pretentious" film, and why is that bad?
IMDb page: Upstream Color
Rating: Not Rated
(Estimated MPAA rating: PG-13 for drug use, sensuality, and disturbing images)
