UPSTREAM COLOR
Upstream Color comes with much critical praise. However, it also comes with much bafflement from the popular audience. It is a work of Shane Carruth who has written and directed as well as photographed and edited the film – and acted in one of the central roles. It is his second film after the critically praised Primer in 2004.
The film is not easy to describe in narrative form. Rather, it relies on atmosphere, on suggestions, on the audience trying to understand what was going on, the experience of the central characters.
The film begins with the focus on a thief, concerned about earthworms, and two youngsters on bikes who are interested in the worms and the effect that they can have when placed in alcohol. There is a transition to a pig farmer who collaborates in something of a transplant process for a young woman who has become ill.
The film focuses on the woman, Kris, who goes through bewildering experiences, not sure of her identity, becoming physically ill, losing her job. She encounters a man who befriends her, supports her, falls in love with her, and is protective.
While this description might sound lucid (it is hoped), the elliptic narrative still requires a great deal of attention, empathy for the woman and what she is experiencing, exploring of the puzzlement about what has happened. There is a focus on the pigs, on the pig farmer and the experiments he was conducting which have dire consequences at times for the young woman.
Throughout the film there is a focus on Thoreau’s Walden and its philosophy of life in the 19th century. At the end, a group of people read Walden and, perhaps, discover something about what has happened in their own lives, akin to that of Kris.
Upstream Color is the kind of film that generally does not appeal to a wide audience. Those for whom it makes an impact praise it, one to tease out its issues and questions.
1. The impact of the film? Puzzling? Impressions? Narrative? Imagination? Themes and reflection?
2. The work of the director, his extensive contribution to this film?
3. The locations, real and surreal? Ordinary, jobs, the city? The world of the thief, the youngsters, the worms? Biological issues? Biogenetics? The pigs? The experiments? Kris and Jeff? Meeting, life, identity, search?
4. The pacing, the editing, the musical score? Audience reaction, thinking, pondering, questioning? Emotional response to the characters and situations?
5. The worms, the thief, the collection, the boys and the cycling, the drinking, the worms in the drink? The transition to the pigs?
6. The pigs, ordinary, the worms, Kris and her experience, the sampler, a transplant, the worm in her, the knife and her trying to get the word out?
7. In the dark and the weight, Jeff finding her, care, her imagination, the effect, the woman inside her, the knife, cutting? The references to Thoreau and Walden? The use of the book, the cover, people reading it? Relevance?
8. Kris and her life, moving in and out, sometimes lacking control, her job, seeing her at work, her explanations for her condition, being fired? Jeff and his relationship, care, talking with her, in bed, the worry, the visits?
9. The sample, no words, the sack of pigs, the bridge and his drowning them?
10. The pigs floating upstream, the flowers and their colours, the collectors?
11. The house, the sounds, the flow under the house, Kris and her concern, Jeff and his search?
12. Jeff, the explanations about his job, the office, consulting, the clash with the workers, scattering the papers?
13. Kris, swimming, collecting the stains, the explanations, warden?
14. Kris, the gun, the room with a sampler, the shooting?
15. Giving the copy of Walden to all the sample people to read, their reading it, search, assembly? The group coming together, the confrontation?
16. Kris, the sampler, the insertion, the affinity with the pigs, the scenes with the pigs, the bonding?
17. Kris, her future, Jeff? The other samples?
18. The issues of biogenetics, control, humanity, identity, loss of identity, becoming victims? Taking stands?
