Upstream Color 2013

This is Shane Carruth's Second major film. And like his first film "Primer", This is a movie Shane wrote, directed, produced, starred in and he created the music for, And it's very evident that this man is really able to work within a budget. Primer had a budget of only $7,000, and even this was made dirt cheap at $50,000. This is a movie that prides itself at not holding the audience's hand while they watch it. The first time you watch this movie, you'll most likely feel a little confused as the movie goes on. But don't believe that this movie is some sort of giant artistic metaphor like "The Dance Of Reality". The film is showing you an actual story, and everything that appears on screen is very literal. With "Upstream Color, Shane Carruth has dramatically improved with cinematography. With some cinematic sequences that seem like they would be more suited to "The Tree of Life". The acting and chemistry between the main actors is great and both are very talented.This film is original, inventive and pretty intelligent and thought provoking. If you want to see a well-acted, directed and overall well-executed drama about connection, then I highly recommend this movie.

Upstream Colour (or Color in the USA) is a difficult film to describe in many ways. It is very loosely plotted, slow and at times makes little sense from a linear story-telling point of view. The slow lazy progress and seemingly haphazard story will infuriate many people and I can imagine probably 50% of any random audience leaving way before the end.

The biggest problem with the film, aside from the glacial pace, is large swathes of the story are hard to understand and seemingly deliberately obscure. This can be immensely frustrating, for me the frustration came at the end of the film when a couple of end scenes did not wrap up anything and just made me scratch my head. Whether the director, writer, and the actor playing Jeff, Shane Carruth, made it this way on purpose I do not know.

The film is very dreamlike in the imagery throughout giving it more of a Euro-Arthouse project and certainly the subject matter, what I believe the maker was trying to say, is more on a level with these more esoteric and sometimes impenetrable films. The acting, particularly by Amy Seimetz playing Kris, is beautifully realised and she certainly glues the film together when it could easily fall apart the seams from time to time but overall when thinking about the film, and after seeing it you do, the overriding question is more than likely ‘what was that about’.

There is a theme of a complete loss of identity and the breakdown of everything you are to start again – I think. The tasks given by The Thief that come back to Kris are making paperchains and reading a novel by Walden, a writer I have no experience of, other than some comments of it being dreary and almost torture to read, perhaps this is an in-joke. The connection of all living things seems to be in there somewhere although I cannot help feeling the pivotal character of the Pig Farmer/Sampler, played by Andrew Sensenig, maybe should have been a bit less obfuscating to make a little more sense of his part in the story. Was he the man who started it all or a benign presence?

If you ever find out tell me.

I did not dislike Upstream Colour but neither did I really like it. Definitely a curate’s egg of a movie and will divide opinion from all that witness it. I enjoyed it during my viewing but overall, I felt that Carruth should perhaps use joined up writing just a little more so that the ideas he is trying to explore did appear through a fog of confusion.

Somewhere in Upstream Colour there is a really good, interesting and thoughtful story and indeed question but perhaps a lack of budget or good creative partner for Carruth muddied the waters. Having said this if the director/writer carries on in this vein pushing ideas and themes such as this and in Primer he is going to make a fantastic film that you will not be able to forget.