It all starts with a worm…
The H-Bomb: Way back in 2004, a hot young talent named Shane Carruth took the Sundance Film Festival by storm with his feature debut, Primer, a brain bending science-fiction flick that he wrote, directed, starred, shot, edited and even composed the score for. It was a dense, cerebral time travel tale that confounded many, but those willing to wade through the jargon heavy dialogue (Carruth was an engineer in his past life) and the tricky story structure, found the film both worthwhile and rewarding. Like with Lynch and Eraserhead, or Aronofsky and Pi, Primer seemed to announce the arrival of a challenging new filmmaker in Carruth.
And then, nothing… years came and went, and I heard not a peep about Shane Carruth or his potential follow up to Primer. I eventually assumed he was a mere one shot wonder who had his fifteen minutes, and would never be seen or heard from again. Then, nearly a decade after his original indie hit, Carruth finally returns with his sophomore feature, Upstream Color, and having taken it in, I can say to the people who found Primer confusing… you have no fucking idea what confusing really is.
Whereas a director like Christopher Nolan started out in the art house, and moved more into the mainstream with each successive film, Carruth has moved in the exact opposite direction, as Upstream Color is far less accessible, and far more esoteric than his previous effort. Primer, though it demanded the audience’s attention, eventually, by the end, did provide a fairly clear picture of what was happening. This one demands not only our absolute, undivided attention, but our interpretation, as well. Carruth is acquitting himself well with the David Lynchs and the Terrence Malicks of the world, in his refusal to spoon feed us anything.
Unfolding like a hazy, half-remembered dream, Upstream Color tells the story of Kris (Amy Seimetz), a successful career woman who wakes up one day to find that not only are several days missing from her memory, but that she’s been fired from her job, her bank accounts have been completely emptied, and her life has more or less been ruined. I should note here that we the viewer are privy to what happened to Kris, but for the sake of spoiling as little as possible, I won’t go into it. I’ll simply state that she is the victim of a rather complex (and bizarre) scheme involving worms and pigs.
As she tries to put her life back together, she meets Jeff (played by director Carruth), a man who, as we discover, has been victimized in the same way that Kris has, and whose life is also in shambles. The two of them fall in love (naturally) as they attempt to piece together and solve the mystery of what exactly happened to them… at least, that’s what I think they’re trying to do.
I’m going to be straight up with you, folks, I’ve watched Upstream Color twice now, and I don’t completely get it. I don’t think it’s a film that can be completely gotten, per se. I would compare it to something like Lynch’s Inland Empire, in that at times it becomes abstract in the extreme, with surreal imagery (like worms crawling around a nervous system) and a hypnotic score. Technically speaking, the film is an absolute marvel, with cinematography that is cold, clinical, yet stunning at the same time, and an intoxicating sound design that could lull even the most hyperactive of us into a trance. But to say the movie is not audience friendly is perhaps the understatement of the year.
When it comes to films as impenetrable as this one, I can go either way, as some, like The Tree of Life, I enjoyed immensely, while others, like the Cronenberg crap-fest Cosmopolis, I loathed with every ounce of my being. I suppose what it comes down to is, if I think there’s something within the film to actually get, I’ll go with it, but if I feel like a director is just jerking me around, I won’t. With Upstream Color, I didn’t feel like Carruth was jerking me about, and I was certainly going with it for a while, as I was genuinely intrigued through most of it. Unfortunately, as the movie wore on, my curiosity turned into frustration, as I became less intrigued and more irritated by the film’s obtuseness. It had me, but at some point along the way, it kind of lost me.
I don’t think, however, that the film is a total wash. After my first viewing, it left me cold and confused, but when I re-watched it, I gleaned more from it, and I have a feeling I’ll get even more out of it on subsequent viewings. I imagine many who see Upstream Color, even those who consider themselves open minded film buffs, will be left utterly mystified and absolutely hating it. I wouldn’t blame them, but I would urge them to give it another go, as there is way too much to absorb here in a single viewing. People who prefer their movies straight forward and spelled out for them, or who found Primer impossible to wrap their minds around, should probably pass on Upstream Color, as it is one I can only cautiously recommend to the most adventurous of moviegoers…very cautiously.
