[UPSTREAM COLOR screens Monday July 8th at 5:45 pm and 7:45 pm at the Cleveland Institute of Art McCullough Center.]
Review
by Bob Ignizio
I'm not even going to pretend I
completely understood everything that happened in UPSTREAM COLOR.
The plot is kind of amorphous and meandering, involving maggots or
grubs of some kind that a conman (Thiago Martins) is putting inside
pill capsules and selling as a street drug. Those who ingest the
larvae hallucinate and become highly suggestible, allowing the conman
to do things like suggest to Kris (Amy Seimetz) that she take out a
home equity loan and give the money to him. In addition, the larvae
evidently grow and replicate inside the host body. It's only thanks
to a mysterious guy who shows up with a truck full of PA equipment
blaring weird sound effects that somehow draw the worms out of Kris'
body that she is freed of the parasites, which are then drawn into a
pig. So yeah, pretty much your typical start to a movie.
Kris' life is a
shambles after her ordeal, but when she makes a love connection with
Jeff (writer/director/etc., Shane Carruth) it looks like things might
get better. As it turns out, Jeff has gone through the same weird
experience, but whether that will ultimately bring these two closer
together or push them apart remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the guy
with the sound system hangs out on a pig farm (where apparently the
pigs who sucked out the larvae all live) and records various weird
sounds. He also somehow manages to astrally project himself to
locations where past victims of the larvae are at. I think.
Yeah,
this is a pretty strange movie. Many critics have compared UPSTREAM
COLOR to Terrence Malick's
recent TREE OF LIFE. With
its impressionistic visual style and the way it follows more of an
emotional rather than a linear narrative, that's not an unfair
comparison. There are also elements that recall early Cronenberg (the
idea of humans undergoing strange and horrifying mutations) and Lynch
(the emphasis on disconcerting sounds). Finally, the way in which the
film depicts the romance between its two main characters as a kind of
insanity is very much akin to William Friedkin's BUG,
right down to the use of bugs as symbols.
Similarities
aside, UPSTREAM COLOR
is its own film. As the late Roger Ebert often said, it isn't what a
film is about, but how it is about it. The way UPSTREAM
COLOR goes about “it” is
decidedly obtuse and murky, and yet in spite of that it's still kind
of compelling. Certainly the visuals and the performances are a large
part of that, but so is trying to figure it all out. My guess is that
the film is a call for humanity to get back in touch with nature,
represented by, among other things, the frequent use of Thoureau's
Walden.
This
is the kind of movie that probably should be viewed more than once
before filing away one's final pronouncement, but since I don't have
that luxury, first impressions will have to do. On one hand I
welcomed the challenge UPSTREAM
COLOR
presents, while on the other I found it kind of annoying and smug.
One has to wonder whether the effort expended in trying to understand
the film is worth the rewards of doing so, and at the moment, I'm
honestly still not sure. Let's call it... 2 1/2 out of 4 stars.
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