Upstream Color (2013)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

#78. Upstream Color (2013)

 

 

“Whether it’s digital technology or media spectacles, the artificial paradises of mind-altering drugs or the ecstatic experience of art or the wondrous bond of love, the dream of interconnectedness, of breaking through the boundaries of the self, belong to a dream of liberation. For Carruth, liberation and enslavement are inseparable; the loss of self is a realm of danger and dependency.”

---Richard Brody

 

Texans are weird.

 

OK, we already knew that. Their current State Legislator and Governor is trying to create the Republic of Gilead before our eyes, Sedition is now part of the official Republican Party platform, and in Europe “Texan” is now slang for “crazy” (but that’s only because they don’t know enough about Florida), but not what I’m talking about.

 

Much of the best SF,F&H for last few decades comes out of Texas. Novelists Joe R. Lansdale, Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner all come out of Texas. The Turkey City Writer's Workshop came from Texas and their Lexicon proved among the most important things to happen to SF prose since Editor John W. Campbell got steady employment. Writer/Director Robert Rodriguez is a Texan, as is Terrance Malik, and even though Malik doesn’t do much SF,F&H, let’s face it, he’s still pretty weird.

 

And then there’s Shane Carruth, a Texan, though not a native, and he might not be the weirdest on the list, but not for lack of trying the audiences and defying expectations.

 

His first film, for which he was Producer/Writer/Director/Cinematographer/Editor/Composer/Distributor as well as lead Actor (noted Critic Zach Barron, “did everything short of catering, which he delegated to his mother.”), was “Primer” (2004). It created incredible excitement in the SF and larger Cinema Critical community because he’d broken all the rules. He’d made a micro-budget SF film that was idea-driven, visually holding one’s attention without an obvious visual style (almost like a John Sales drama), Dialogue-not-Action-driven, and didn’t hold back on the Technical Jargon (Carruth is a former Engineer), but thanks to his sure hand, the complex film didn’t confuse us in its unusual density … or, at least, not until the end. It was a Time Travel film, and the last Paradox was challenging to some, but most weren’t annoyed, instead they clamoring to understand what happened. The internet was a-buzz with explanations.

 

His second film, “Upstream Color” was long-coming and much-anticipated. Here he is, again, Producer/Writer/Director/Cinematographer/Editor/Composer/Distributor and lead Actor. Though far removed from “Primer” in Theme and Style (it was far more compelling visually) but still shared much with the first. It demanded a great deal from the audience early on, but also guided us with a sure hand, but then later it demanded even more and a lot of us got confused. Personally, I had a lot more trouble with “Upstream Color” than “Primer.”

 

It's it focused on Kris (Amy Seimetz) and Jeff (Carruth himself), lovers thrown together after a shared personal disaster. They were financially and socially ruined by a Thief who is never named (Thiago Martins) and the SF emerges because the Thief has managed to make these two unknowingly commit the Financial Frauds against themselves and their employers on his behalf without them having any memory of it. The film is initially about Mind Control, but progressively, it is about much more.

 

The Thief and his associate, the Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), have discovered a Parasite that, it’s suggested, is common in some parts of the USA, but its potential went unnoticed until now. It has a four-stage life-cycle: First in Orchids; Second passing to Pigs; Third when it reaches us Humans -- it is at this point that the Thief is empowered. I’ll talk about the Fourth stage later.

 

The first indication that the Thief is not in complete control of what the Parasite can do is revealed (well, sorta revealed, almost no one understood this part on first viewing) when, in addition to the harm the Thief inflicted, Kris and Jeff are traumatized because of their Psychic links to the pigs from which each of their Parasites were harvested and/or returned to, that’s the Sampler’s job. The Sampler is a Foley Artist, and his work with recording environmental sounds has taught him to “Worm Charm,” drawing the Parasites form the orchids and dirt with amplified vibrations, then transplanting them into pigs. Transferring from pigs to humans is a little blunter and nastier.

 

Kris and Jeff start behaving erratically because they start feeling traumas that they, themselves, aren’t experiencing. When the pigs are separated, Kris and Jeff feel the pain even though they are still together. When one pig loses its babies, Kris feels that trauma even though she was never pregnant. When the pigs are reunited, Kris and Jeff feel that as well. There’s a powerful image, the lovers, fully clothed, curled together in a bathtub, it has a desperate poignancy to it and became the image on the film’s poster.

 

There’s an obvious debt to Theodore Sturgeon’s novel “More than Human” (1953) about the Evolution of a Gestalt Consciousness. The Thief has learned how to Psychically Enslave his victims, but is blind to the fact that the process doesn’t stop there. It’s also pretty opaque so, in service to my readers, I’m going to summarize the film in some detail and not hold back on the spoilers.

 

 

After the Sampler intervenes and helps the broken Kris, we start to see the Fourth-stage. Kris learns to connect with other infected Humans, presumably all victims of the Thief, and there are a lot of them. Linked together, they represent the Gestalt Intelligence, the next stage of Human Evolution.

 

The Thief disappears from the story. The Sampler pays the price for the Thief’s Sins and his own Ignorance, despite having done some acts of kindness. This film isn’t about Justice, but reactions to Trauma, taking next-steps when surrounded by rubble.

 

Together, the Gestalt seizes the Sampler’s farm, make improvements, and tend to the pigs. There’s an image of Kris in a Madonna-like pose with a piglet.

 

Arguably, this is a more Autobiographical film than “Primer.” Critic Charlie Jane Anders observed, “These people that have been affected by this [organism] are now taking back ownership of the thing that they’re connected to.”

 

Carruth describes “Upstream Color” as a study the of question of personhood: how much any of us has control over the people we become. “What if you could just magically strip that away? … What would that look like? What if somebody had to rebuild it from scratch midway through their life?”

 

The film’s most obvious flaw is that becomes increasingly impenetrable (before an audience at the Sundance Film Festival Carruth joked, "Ah, so the plot didn't land"). but it also has a languid poetry leaving us wanting to understand, rather than just turning it off. Critic-after-Critic compared this film to the work of the above-mention Malik, and were quite right to do-so. Both this and “Primer” concerning warping Time, but this one doesn’t have Time Travel in the plot, just a non-chronologic rhythm created by scenes employing Time-Lapse photography, the editing moving backwards and forwards through events in the midst of a single conversation, and other devices. There also a repeated motif concerning William David Thoreau’s “Walden” (1954) but hardly a word from the book is spoken, but then, in the last third of the film, hardly a word at all is spoken at all.

 

If the film has a Moral, it is how Survivors need each other, and it’s powerful. That Moral, unfortunately, has been since-been stained.

 

In 2013, Critic Barron interviewed Carruth: “Do you have a life independent of making films?”

Carruth: “No! No, absolutely not! I don’t. I don’t have a family; I don’t have kids; I don’t have — I mean, I have brothers and my mom, but no, this is everything for me.”

Barron: “Is that something that you mourn or miss?”

Carruth: “I think I used to. Now, I’m so — it’s weird: I find myself using words like ‘my heart was broken’ or ‘I’m in love with,’ but they’re always about the writing or the project.”

 

Those are odd answers to say the least, especially since Carruth would soon become (maybe already was) engaged to Actress Seimetz. In a separate interview, she described him as, “This person who’s fallen to Earth and hasn’t really gotten how to function … He waxes and wanes through social periods and then doesn’t quite understand everything. And then he goes back and processes it.”

 

The relationship ended acrimoniously, and in 2018 she took a Restraining Order out against him. Then in 2022, Domestic Disputes with another ex-girlfriend led to his arrest. The film explores Trauma that can’t be Verbalized, something I’d argue that Carruth seems all-too-familiar with, and he’s not recovering from whatever that thing is for him.

 

Trailer:

Upstream Color Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Shane Carruth Movie HD - YouTube