Review: Upstream Color (2013)

By Soheil Rezayazdi
April 12, 2013 Approved By NP, Reviews 4 Comments

UpstreamColor_still1_AmySeimetz_ShaneCarruth

Cast: , ,
Director: Shane Carruth
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Upstream Color expands into more cinemas today, April 12th. If you’ve already seen the film we’d love to hear your thoughts on it, or if you’re looking forward to seeing it this weekend, please tell us in the comments section below or in our new Next Projection Forums.

Upstream Color is a kaleidoscopic cocktail of sound and vision. It’s a film that demands to be seen, not read about. So why am I writing this, and why are you reading it? I write to mobilize you out of your seat and into the theater, of course. But I also write for the sheer challenge of capturing the hallucinatory qualities of such a slippery picture. This is a dizzying experience, aesthetically and emotionally, with few points of reference to ground your viewing. It leaves you lightheaded and with a heavy heart. For 96 unrelenting minutes, Upstream Color has you mystified yet feeling like nirvana lies somewhere just over the horizon.

This is a dizzying experience, aesthetically and emotionally, with few points of reference to ground your viewing. It leaves you lightheaded and with a heavy heart.

To start, has the world ever seen a polished, feature-length film that feels more like the work of a single human being? It’d be inaccurate to refer to Upstream Color as Shane Carruth’s “baby,” because even babies require a second person somewhere along the line. Upstream Color, on the other hand, features Carruth as director, writer, cinematographer, editor, composer, producer, co-star, and distributor. Even Terrence Malick – a clear influence here – relies on musical titans like Camille Saint-Saëns and Francois Couperin to achieve the transcendent heights of films like Days of Heaven and The Tree of Life. Carruth’s film, meanwhile, plays like the unfiltered sum of one man’s fears, hopes, and creative impulses.

Screen Shot 2013-04-12 at 11.45.51 AMIf one can say that a feature-length fever dream can even have a plot, the story here circles around Kris (Amy Seimetz), a young woman who gets abducted, brainwashed, and robbed using a mysterious and never-really-explained narcotic harvested from worms and pigs. She emerges from the experience traumatized, skittish of all human contact. She soon meets Jeff (Carruth), a romantic suitor with similar, never-really-explained demons (notice a pattern?). The two form a volatile bond at the center of an inchoate storm around them.

Meanwhile, in what could pass as another movie altogether, a taciturn audio designer (Andrew Sensenig) explores a nearby wooded area to record ominous sounds, which he uses as part of an elaborate process to drug and transfix people he abducts.

For those seeking an elevator pitch, Upstream Color has at least one significant point of comparison: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Like that movie, Carruth’s work flows like a torrent of fragmented memories from a romantic relationship. It’s an experimental love story, one that grounds bravura visuals with the everyday moments that comprise a long-term partnership. Eternal Sunshine and Upstream Color – even the titles hint at their dreamy, impressionistic tones. The former had laughs and offered relatable insights on the sad/funny fate of long-term love. Upstream Color, like some psychedelic lazy-river ride, lures us with its gorgeous imagery, rhythmic editing, and ambient score down an experimental abyss.

 Upstream Color, like some psychedelic lazy-river ride, lures us with its gorgeous imagery, rhythmic editing, and ambient score down an experimental abyss.

Carruth seeks to transfix us – much like one of Sensenig’s subjects – with narrative ambiguity and sheer aesthetic wonder. And he succeeds. Upstream Color is a work of otherworldly awe. At no point did I want off the ride, even if I felt a bit let down by the smallness of its ending. Its resolution, while still barely coherent, reduces the narrative to a simple revenge story. The final minutes in particular are so saccharine, I wonder if they’re in fact some kind of sarcastic joke. Here and elsewhere, the mere sight of the horizon tantalizes us more than what actually lies beyond it.

The film also feels oddly conventional in its depiction of gender. Upstream Color is yet another movie about a hysterical woman and her grounded, more rational man. I’d love to see a version of Carruth’s film with a man as the unhinged lead. I suspect that version didn’t make it on screen, if for no other reason because Seimetz is simply a better actor than Carruth.

Upstream Color is something of a gentle barrage, a quiet rush of evocative images and sounds. This 96-minute mood montage will enchant cinephiles for as long as we keep watching movies.

90/100 ~ AMAZING. A psychedelic wonder. One viewing surely isn’t enough for Upstream Color, the new film from Shane Carruth. Part Terrence Malick, part Eternal Sunshine, part puzzle picture, Upstream Color is as baffling as it is unshakeable.
By Soheil Rezayazdi
I’m a communications officer at a nonprofit advocacy organization in New York City. At work, I pay OCD-like attention to words, images, and the impressions they leave. After hours, I watch directors do the same on celluloid and digital video. Cinema is the most effective natural stimulant I know.
  • http://twitter.com/soapombri Ombretta Di Dio

    What a wonderful review.

  • http://twitter.com/SoheilNY SoheilRezayazdi

    Thanks for the kind words! Have you seen it yet? I saw you were also thinking about reviewing it for NP.

  • Daniel Tucker

    Such an experience watching this movie. Great review.

  • http://twitter.com/soapombri Ombretta Di Dio

    I haven’t seen it yet, but I will this upcoming week and review it!