Upstream Color
(2013)
(SPOILERS – NOT THAT THEY WILL HELP) Shane Carruth’s
sophomore feature film finds him on his on-going mission, begun with Primer, to elicit widespread audience
bafflement. I found his first picture’s narrative complexity enticing,
frustrating, head scratching and ultimately distancing. And so Upstream Color, with its fractured meditation
on identity and connection, is fascinating, elusive and ultimately distancing.
It is perhaps ironic that a film exploring such themes refuses to bridge the
gap and meets its audience halfway. Carruth, even when making a film about who
it is we are (or think we are), constructs it as an appeal to the mind rather than
the heart and the emotions.
This appears to be an essential ingredient of the puzzles he
creates, however. Carruth’s pictures immediately inhabit an exclusive niche that
encourages in depth analysis and theorising (and which can bring out the worst
in people; those who adore his films may succumb to a tendency to dismiss those
who don’t as unwashed ignoramuses, while those left cold may ascribe it the
knee jerk label of pretentious bollocks). Such devotion is well and good,
provided the undertaking reaps benefits in one’s appreciation of the film. With
Primer (despite being immensely
impressed one level) I found the vague, indistinct protagonists an added
challenge on top of a densely clinical script; the lo-fi environment and
performances ensured an impenetrable remove from the material. It seemed that
Carruth was doing his darnedst to make life difficult, no doubt reasoning that
once his audience arrived at answers their satisfaction would be
all-the-greater. Performance isn’t such issue with Upstream Color, although Carruth isn’t the most engaging of actors
(he needs a weak spot though, as his multi-hyphenate writer-director-composer-actor
status is slightly sickening). The “plot” maybe isn’t that impenetrable, but Carruth’s storytelling manner (be it through
framing, pacing or intercutting) is so intentionally diffuse that it may seem
more disconnected than it is.
Carruth’s on record saying he doesn’t care for plot
synopses, which may explain why Upstream
Color’s premise is woefully inadequate even when you’ve seen the film; “A man and woman are drawn together,
entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an
illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives”. Carruth
treats the life cycle of his organism with the same earnestness and diligence
as his take on time travel in Primer.
But just as I’m a little less impressed with some of that film’s ideas in
retrospect, knowing that he also advised on the flawed logic that drove Looper, so the process he creates here never
seems remotely plausible. Indeed, it may be even less so for the matter-of-fact
manner with which it is rendered. Since the governing principles of the
organism lack believability, one assumes we are being asked to look through to
the possible metaphors that lie behind. Carruth has offered clues, some of
which are self-evident, some of which are less so. The challenge lies in
threading together a consistent thematic content, as I’m unsure how rigorously
Carruth himself has developed it (and to get him to admit it would be nigh on
impossible). We are left defining them in only their broadest sense.
I’ll provide at least a partial synopsis, for all the good
it will do. Kris (Amy Seimetz, who is very good) is drugged and robbed by a
character credited only as the Thief (Thiago Martins). Left in a posthypnotic
state, and infected with a worm, she finds herself at the farm of another
oblique character, the Sampler (Andrew Sensenig). He transfuses the worm into a
pig, and Kris is left with no memory of these events. A year later Jeff
(Carruth) engages with her on a train journey; she is resistant, but it is clear
that there is some sort of heightened connection between the two. Jeff has
encountered not dissimilar hardships (he also bears physical signs of the
treatment Kris received from the Sampler) and their mutually inclusive
relationship develops to the point where they are sharing each other’s
memories, unclear whose is whose. All the while, a psychic link to their
respective pigs on the farm is maintained. It appears that their emotional
states affect their human counterparts. And it is evident that the Sampler is
using this connection to vicariously eavesdrop on the experiences of the
“sampled”.
As suggested, the cycle relies on some very unlikely
principles to succeed, such that it would be pointless to try and figure out
how those involved realised the cause-and-effect in the first place. When the
infected pigs give birth, the Sampler drowns the piglets in a sack. A substance escapes from the decomposing
piglets that causes blue flowers to grow, which the Thief purchases. The larvae
found on these flowers can be used to drug a victim or larvae extract can be
used to provide a telepathic “high”. Once
infected by the Thief, humans visit the farm and the cycle repeats itself (they
are attracted by the infrasonic messages the Sampler sends the worms).
Carruth has “helpfully” commented that his inspiration came
from ideas of identity; what it constitutes, how much our actions come from our
core being and how much from rote behaviour. So he places his protagonists in a
situation where they have no memory of their former selves and sees how they
fare. It may be that he intends the encounters with the Thief and the Sampler
to represent traumatic life experiences that affect our sense of self. The
Thief might be any addiction (he achieves his aims through encouraging
repetitive behaviour in his victims, leaves them virtually destitute and unable
to function in the world). The Sampler may represent an apparent “healing” that
merely plasters over the wound, without understanding the broader picture (at
least, this is how I interpret the visit to the doctor, where Kris – who
believes she is expecting, mirroring her pig’s actual pregnancy – is told that
she had cancer and that she cannot conceive). Or perhaps these individuals can
be interpreted as the greater, cumulative, forces within society, operating
with no conscious awareness of each other but succeeding in perpetuating a
malaise of somnambulance that afflicts each one of us. The drain on Kris and
Jeff needn’t be an addiction; it could be as mundane as a binding mortgage, or
as pervasive as an unquestioning belief system.
The director has stressed that the “antagonists” are not aware of
each other, and it cannot be coincidence that the theme of interconnectedness
finds “resolution” when the now self-aware protagonists end the cycle of
parasitical interdependence. They appear to progress from replacing one dependency
with another (their relationship) to a deeper understanding of their place in
the macrocosm. Or do they? Carruth refers to Kris's action as a “sort of horrifying ending” since she
“shoots” the wrong guy (whatever else we are to conclude regarding the
Sampler’s specific culpability). Perhaps there is a symbolic positivity in that
Kris and her fellow sampled “take responsibility” for their past actions/behaviours
(as personified in the pigs). Perhaps they have found only a partial answer, as
they are now unable to recognise the part “the Thief” played in their reaching
this place (so their final status may be akin to assuming another false
doctrine or learnt behaviour one that prevents true perception and catharsis).
A swathe of reviewers instantly compared Upstream Color to Terrence Malick’s
work. I can’t say I really see the connection, except in the most superficial
terms. Sure, there’s a gauzy dreamlike feel to scenes and interactions and
maybe To the Wonder is closer in its
abstraction to Color than most Malick.
But we always remain on the exterior of Carruth’s world looking in, no matter
how intimate his envisioning becomes. We cannot do otherwise, because his
narrative play is all about concealment and the assemblage of missing pieces.
As such there’s an absence of Malick’s attempts to explore the universal.
Carruth looks at what we mistake for meaning; Malick uses his characters to
contemplate meaning.
But as to the superficial qualities, there is definitely a
visual lustre that compares. Among the scenes of decomposing porkers and unpleasant
self-harming, Carruth (as DP) has manifested something striking and haunting.
His images and edgy-yet-ambient score cohere to create an immediately
encompassing world. It doesn’t seem like a lived-in world (something it shares
with the austere Primer) but this suits the heightened states of Kris and Jeff.
And, if I’m not wholly sold on his vision, I can’t deny the
uniqueness of what Carruth has created. From the beginning, he ushers us
towards the stylised and inexplicable. The Thief explains to Kris that he was
born with a disfigurement, such that his head is made of the same material as
the Sun. As a result, it is impossible to look directly at him. Imposing ideas
and images accumulate throughout, and their singular qualities balance the impatience
that greets Carruth’s refusal to be drawn on their meaning. The Sampler, with
his strange musical clarion call to his future sampled, appears unseen to his
victims, observing their experiences. There’s an almost Lynchian quality to
this, but without the imminent horror mustered by Jimmy Stewart from Mars. Then
there’s the merging of memories, as Kris and Jeff claim each other’s past, and
Kris’s stone-gathering in a swimming pool, leading to their recall of the book
passages used by the Thief indoctrinated his victims.
My nagging doubt is that Carruth’s elliptical conjuring is
an elaborate sleight of hand, and that it doesn’t warrant untold hours exposing
its secrets. Of course, that is for the beholder to decide. Perhaps my
resistance to pouring over Primer,
and now this, is a sign of laziness. Perhaps it’s a symptom of my identity
controlling me. Or maybe it’s me controlling my identity. While I may revisit
the picture, I feel no urgency to dot every “I” and cross every “T” of its
potential meaning, any more than Carruth feels compelled to explain himself. We
tend to know pretty much straight away when we love a movie. And among those
are the ones that fuel endless fascination and rediscovery. On much rarer
occasions appreciation for a picture we initially dismissed can develop, as
we become aware of its hidden depths or merits. For now, I’m content to draw a
line under Upstream Color.
****