Upstream Color

I attended this film solo (only one other person in the theater) which turned out to be a good thing as distractions were nil. Carruth has a lot of respect for the viewer. He doesn't do exposition. And if you pay close attention to this film, you wont need it. Unlike other reviews I've seen, I found Primer much harder to suss out than Upstream Color. There was a clear narrative here and the main protagonists arc is clear to see. I loved it. It was intense, beautifully shot, scored, and of course acted, especially by Amy Seimetz, the lead. She was amazing. If you like your films delivered to you on a silver platter, then this is not for you. But if you like to think a little bit, you will find the 90+ minutes of Upstream Color thoroughly enjoyable. I hope it does very well. And I hope Carruth doesn't take another 8 yrs to do his next one.

As you all know, with PRIMER, Shane Carruth announced himself to the world as a naturally gifted talent, one who could rival the likes of James Cameron. Of course, it never happened as he struggled to get his second film off the ground.

Nine years after PRIMER Shane Carruth's long awaited second film is as dense as expected, with an impossible to understand third act that still manages to intrigue due to its sheer technical mastery. With UPSTREAM COLOR Carruth proves he is not a one-shot wonder. He also proves he is the ultimate NYC and L.A. art-film director incapable of adapting to more mainstream story telling.

Much has been written about the plot so I will not get into the specifics here. What I will say is that I think Carruth purposely holds critical information from his films as a way to challenge viewers and force them to think. This is admirable. But in the end, a bit frustrating because with just a few answers both PRIMER and now UPSTREAM COLOR would be fit for the masses without compromising artistic integrity.

The film made sense to me for about an hour and then it started to slip away. Like with Primer, I just lost my footing and could not gain hold. Amazingly enough, I still enjoyed the experience and was never bored, In fact, at times I was held in genuine suspense.

The third act has been described as 30 minutes without dialog and that simply is not true. There are numerous sequences without dialog and about halfway through we get a major sequence of events told with visuals and music. Then we have some more conventional filmmaking (conventional is really not the right word) followed by what I think might be around 15 minutes of dialog free visuals. The ending makes no sense to me, but I will see the film again and hope to sort it out.

Carruth designed the sound and composed the music and let me tell you, he hit both out of the park. The man could work scoring films and make a great living. The same goes for his sound design.

I watched the film at IFC in New York City and they have a pretty good sound system. What they don't have is a great screen. It might be the proper widescreen aspect ratio, but the images appeared darker in sections and that harmed Carruth's amazing visuals, rumored to have been captured with a hacked $700 Pansonic DSLR (the GH2). The image is akin to a RED or Alexa and throughout Carruth plays with shallow depths of field. This results in some shots missing the sharply focused mark, but for the most part the visuals shine. This film proves you do not need Hollywood style lighting and equipment to make Hollywood level films.

The Blu-Ray will be out in May and I have already put it on order at Amazon. There is no question in my mind that by year's end I will have sat through UPSTREAM COLOR numerous times.

I look forward to Carruth's next film, but with the hope for a little more clarity in his narrative.

Baffling. Extraordinary. Pigs. Barely any dialogue. Beautiful looking. Directed by Shane Carruth (Primer), It's very challenging - so much so that I'm not even sure repeat viewings will shed any more light on it. It's definitely one for cinema purists who like to watch cerebral movies. In that respect it's more of an experience than a movie aligned with Terence Malick and Darren Aronofsky material. What's it about? The cycle of life? genetics? religion? morality? ethics? Probably all these things. What's clear is that Shane Carruth operates on a level that is different to most of us!

After this movie ended, I was dumbstruck. I sat looking at the end credits, searching through what I had just watched, remembering the film vividly, and yet having it still be a blur.

Upstream Color is not a literal movie. The plot is never explained directly to the viewer, and the actions taken by the characters are unclear in reason and motivation. The most obvious things I could say about the movie are that it is filmed very well, and it has a nice musical score.

But the movie is not about literal plot. It's not about literal characters. It's about feelings and thoughts. It's a movie about broken people trying to fix themselves. There are things everybody in the movie will understand, and there are things nobody will.

It's a lot like music. When you put on music, you know the mood, and you know the melody, and you know the tempo and the harmony, and it can be a beautiful experience, even though you have no idea what the lyrics mean. And upstream color is a lovely, almost meditative movie about the lives of everyone being interconnected, and about how when people form companionship they start to become one, and yet someone else may say totally opposite things than I'm saying, and they wouldn't be wrong.

It's not a movie for people that think a film must have a literal story. It's not a movie for people who won't watch an hour and a half of meditation. It's not for people who see movies to see stories. And there is no shame in disliking this movie. But if you can appreciate an abstract story and can sit through an hour and a half of meditation, this is the movie for you.

Stanley Kubrick said in his later years: "A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later." If Stanley Kubrick were alive today, I think he would have liked this movie a lot.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have rated this a 7. Not going to go into why. I don't see any 9&10 reviewers calling the 1&2 reviewers names or degrading them. So what's with the anger? I love lots of different styles of books, music and films. I played in a death metal band and screamed and growled almost impossible to understand lyrics. One of my literature teachers heard one of our songs and asked me why so aggressive, messy and incoherent the music was. (It wasn't at all to me or our fans). I asked him to look at the water colour painting he had on the wall, it was one of his. I asked why the lines were blurred and colors mixed insrmtead of clear, sharp and defined lines; wouldn't that make the shapes and motives be easier to understand? He just smiled and nodded. If you don't like it, that's tooootally understandable. I don't like all the movies I watch either. And I might leave a comment about my experience. But I really don't think those who did enjoy it have ANY need to lie or pretend as some of you have said, nor have anything to gain by writing an anaymous review here. Hope we are more friendly here.