"Poems have meaning. Poets use their form deliberately, and even abstract work takes purpose to matter. A movie without depth or story isn't automatically "a poem," and a movie is not a painting either. A painter's creativity may explode from him/her, but movies aren't so spontaneous. Even a gush of complex imagination on the page still must be rendered meticulously on screen. [Director] Carruth fundamentally refuses to employ content or structure that would illuminate whatever he thinks he's trying to say and doesn't come close to pairing narrative and approach the way, say, Paul Thomas Anderson does with the spectacular, appropriately confounding "The Master." Coherence is not your enemy, and you and your movies are why some people hate independent cinema."-Matt Pals
I do not consider myself a film snob at all. I loved going to the theatre with my dad on a Friday night to see the latest summer blockbuster when I was a kid, and likewise I enjoy watching arthouse indies, with the caveat they are made with care and intelligence. Just like I scolded Star Wars and Marvel at bad attempts at sci-fi adventure, I will just as easily jump down the throat of a bad low budget film for similar reasons. Critiquing a film based on its narrative is relatively easy in comparison to discussing experimental films. 90 minute surrealist avant garde films like David Lynch's Eraserhead that use pure images and sound design just to evoke emotion are hard to dissect in a meaningful way, they just make you feel one way or another. But I cannot classify 2013's Upstream Color under any of the above criteria. It is a discombobulating pipebomb of unconnected images, and an absolute endurance test of your patience, a slog of boredom and pretentiousness that seemingly has no end while you're watching it.
I'm going to describe the plot from the summary on Wikipedia, which somehow breaks the film down well (a truly herculean effort). From writer, director, producer, editor, and star Shane Carruth (definitely a sign of a mega ego), this film has a farmer who uses some sort of experimental larvae to brainwash a woman. Using the hypnosis bug the farmer makes her drain her bank account for him. She meets another man on a train who is similarly being controlled and they fall in love. None of this is presented linearly though, with shots of pigs peppered in, distributing copies of Walden helping them break the spell, and the woman has some sort of cancer that I guess was never there to begin with or something (I literally don't know how to describe it). And how they ever got in a bathtub like in the poster was beyond me.
I had seen some films like this earlier in my film school days. Some black and white films by Salvador Dali and some French New Wave films came across to me as mildly boring after the initial wave of bizarre imagery bombards you, leading you to feel numb to it all. Definitely a case of starting strong and petering out; but regardless I definitely got something out of it. But this film took it to a new level. Bizarre Cronenberg body horror is coupled with sparse, badly recorded dialogue, and no narrative flow. Nothing holds together, Carruth just shoves it all down your throat with a funnel. And the worst part is these kinds of films open up the pandora's box of "ask me what it means" that blockbusters can't. Carruth could always fall back on "that's what I intended to evoke." He is immune to criticism, and would probably dismiss this whole blog post anyway. The biggest sin of the film is the arrogance that is coming off the screen. Carruth has an air that not only is this film too important for you to even be able to comprehend, but the most important film ever made.
Is the bizarre imagery supposed to evoke emotion? If so, I don't know what kind in any meaningful sense. I was slightly grossed out and more pissed off then anything that I had to sit through this. I remember we had to write an essay about this after the class, which I couldn't walk out of at risk of my grade slipping in the attendance department. With nothing to go on at all, how was I supposed to accomplish this? Three pages to fill out based on nothing, I remember I just went and paraphrased articles like this one from the Miami Herald that circlejerked Carruth: "mesmerizing use of imagery, textures and sounds, radiant natural beauty, has a haunting, lyrical quality reminiscent of Terrence Malick. Although its title suggests a sense of direction, Upstream Color defiantly eschews a traditionally linear narrative format; it moves ahead in time but in an elliptical, hypnotic way. And Carruth's rhythmic style of editing draws you in and keeps you hooked even when it may not be entirely clear what you're watching. He's technically meticulous but the results are dreamlike." The "not sure what your watching" part was definitely accurate. Now I feel I have to apologize to Terrence Malick in person.
Rating: No stars
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctsfWviNdcA
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