Upstream Color: Carruth Does It Again

This is not an easy film to talk about. It’s almost as if the more you try to dissect it, the messier and less magical it becomes. Once you enter the labyrinth of critical analysis, the more ensnared you become. Thorns of loose logical ends and unanswered questions make us all feel like cine-file-masochists. And that’s exactly what it’s creator, Shane Carruth, intended. After all, the film itself is about stripping the human mind of its power of comprehension and rational inference. If you feel this way when the credits roll, don’t worry; you’re right where you should be.

Comparing Shane Carruth’s work to Kubrick may be ballsy, but his intricate creative control over every aspect of his film can’t help but bring The Shining director to mind. He’s thought this one out. He’s also had over nine years to do so. After his film Primer swept Sundance in 2004, taking the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, it went on to several Independent Spirit Awards nominations and an extensive cult following. The film was (miraculously) made for $7K and Carruth served as (wait for it) director, writer, producer, composer, production designer and (if you can believe it) editor. It was his film through and through.

Upstream Color has Carruth equally as involved. When questioned about the plot of the film by several sources, Carruth is hesitant to pin down any plot points. After viewing the film, you see why. The first act introduces us to Kris (Amy Seimetz), an average woman who is soon infected by a mysterious worm. With the parasite, a thief (Thiago Martins) is able to manipulate her to withdraw money from her bank account as well as memorize random passages from Thoreau’s “Walden.” She is then lured to an isolated farm where an anonymous man (Andrew Sensenig), simply titled “The Sampler,” performs a bizarre procedure to remove the worm. He transfers it, like unraveling a ball of yarn, to a squirming, live pig. Kris is free of the parasite, but will soon experience the physical and psychological repercussions that come from the strange infestation.

Attempting to carry on life normally, she encounters Jeff (Carruth), a man who has a similar past. They are drawn to one another for unexplainable reasons. And that’s where the plot gets sticky. It fights to free itself from form, splintering into an array of images and text. Kris and Jeff are disintegrating, like an Alzheimer patient losing their memory. They grasp at lucid thoughts and tangible experiences that soon prove only figments of a fractured imagination. They are living as both themselves and also their counter-parts, the pigs at the mysterious farm. They experience a duality with nature that seems both intrinsic to our race as humans and foreign to our reliance on intellect.

And this is how Carruth leaves his viewers perplexed. We grasp, like the characters, to some logical story. We try to piece together the puzzle of The Sampler’s experiments, the pigs in the pen and the peppering of “Walden’s” text in the script. It’s a delicious loss of control. Upstream Color could perhaps be called a horror story for this very reason.

Carruth is not only attempting to ascend the sci-fi genre, which for the above reasons he does so cleverly. He’s also trying to create a new language entirely. In an interview he did with us at ATW, he points out that “The format for screenwriting is so ancient.” Having a hand in literally every aspect of his project, working with visuals, music and text all at once, he poses the question, “How do you organize this network of thoughts?”

Every element of the film gracefully compliments one another. The paranormal music at times is the only glue coalescing odd images of swimming pools, stones and veined human limbs. Text often seems appropriately superfluous and human interaction powerless against the sounds of rocks on walls. Perhaps the script is not the foundation of the house that is a film, but another more visceral element may be.