Upstream Color
Only connect!
Directed by Shane Carruth
United States, 2013
A screenplay featuring pigs and blue orchids? Not the most compelling of invitations but Upstream Color provoked the most discussion, argument and yes, bewilderment so far in this series. It is a film that is brimming with ideas - reflecting on themes as wide ranging as personal identity, alienation and free will whilst also, intermittently, being stubbornly opaque.
Shane Carruth’s audacious debut, Primer (2004), is widely-regarded as one of the best films that has attempted to tackle time-travel. It is a story of puzzles, full of loopholes and paradoxes, but Primer rewards repeated viewing and Carruth established himself as an auteur by not only writing, directing, editing the film: he also acted in it as well as composing the score.
Nine years later he returned with Upstream Color, another film over which he had complete creative control - he even distributed it himself. This film is equally challenging and at times frustrating in its elusivity. It can feel like looking at one of Maurits Escher’s artworks: seemingly coherent elements coming together to form a paradox. However, there is much that is tangible to be discovered amongst the plethora of jump cuts and striking visuals.
You can force your story's shape but the color will always bloom upstream
Other opinions are available but this is our take on the film's narrative: living inside a parasite there is an agent of unclear origin that has a profound effect on the lives and behaviour of the people it comes into contact with. It exists in a cycle passing from orchids to humans and finally, through the intervention of an otherworldly composer/farmer, to pigs. An unnamed man collects the parasites and by forcing one down the throat of a woman, Kris, hypnotises her. Kris’s suggestibility allows him to take over her life and steal her assets. The other significant effect of this agent appears to be the development of an almost telepathic connection between people, illustrated beautifully in the opening scenes which show a group of children mirroring each other’s behaviour. This connection draws together the two lead characters, Jeff and Kris, and progresses to the intertwining of their memories. Does this sound confusing? If so, that is by no means a bad thing.
There is a lot going on here, and this is emphasised by the fast-cut, disorientating edit. Watching Upstream Color at times felt like being a bat, without echolocation, frantically flapping from surface to surface grasping for purpose. The filmmaker has abandoned the rigid plot structure of Primer, and moved toward a film of impressions, where ideas and actions are alluded to and implied but not made evident. There is a loosening of the relation between cause and effect, which is challenging as it’s within our nature to try and make sense of what we experience. Push that too far and you end up with a stream of sensations without meaning … in essence, a bad trip.
Whether Carruth succeeds is open to question but he is clearly striving to do something profound with the form of cinema. That difficulty with cause and effect is itself a key theme, interrogating the idea of free will. We see this in the strange but playful choreographed moves of the boys at the start, which then develops with the sinister and abusive actions of the kidnapper.
Upstream Color keeps pulling the rug out from under the viewer; just when you are starting to feel comfortable in your understanding of events there will be a radical cut, a stripping away. This is redolent of the films of Robert Bresson, such as L’Argent, and in common with Bresson Carruth makes frequent use of ellipses in time and sparse use of dialogue. He also uses several non-professional actors, casting himself in the film as he says he struggled to find actors who didn’t “inject drama into every line”. We are in Bresson’s, perhaps even Brecht’s, territory of alienation here.
Upstream Color is a poetic meditation on a modern-day neurosis. Jeff and Kris have no relationships, although we see a photograph of Kris with a baby that looks like her own, and Jeff refers to a previous marriage. They appear distanced not only from others but also themselves: connections are fragile.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer ― E.M. Forster, Howards End
And who or what is the pig-farmer who uses field recordings to create the film’s astonishing ambient score? His omniscience hints at divinity, yet his role remains ambiguous to the end. Whether his actions are beneficent or sinister is unclear but his participation in a cycle that perpetuates harm alludes to the structural violence that we all, blindly or not, consent to as members of a social structure that relies on violence and exploitation in order to function.
But before we drown in a puddle of pretentious prattle Carruth’s ability to photograph so many exquisite scenes should be acknowledged. And in a film of deliberately muted performances Amy Seimetz (Kris), an impressive filmmaker in her own right, is outstanding. So, a demanding film then but regardless of whether you find the inability to impose a coherent framing intriguing or exasperating, if you stick with it your experience of Upstream Color will linger.
Upstream Color … like Kill List on crack - N
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 91
T - 83
N - 81
S - 81
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