Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

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YnEoS
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#26 Post by YnEoS » Wed Apr 17, 2013 10:50 am

I liked this film a lot, though I'll probably need to see it again before I can put my appreciation into words effectively. All I'll say now, is that the film's narrative seemed to continuously string me along while never really explaining anything coherently. There was a constant stream of narrative information, and it all built on itself in an interesting way, but I never felt a tipping point where everything started adding up, it just got more and more elaborate. I plan on seeing it again on it's theatrical run, I'm sure my experience will be much different a second time around.

Only skimmed the interview posted earlier. But in the Q&A here in Chicago, he said A Topiary was probably the most commercial film he would ever try to make and it failed to get funding despite having huge names behind it. He said he made Upstream Color as a film he could just make right away, no matter what. And in the future he expects he will produce and distribute all his films himself rather than trying to find funding for it. He said he might try crowd funding like kickstarter in the future, but he thinks he would do it in a way, where you pay a normal price for a blu-ray or dvd of the film. He said he doesn't think having someone pay a bunch of money just to have their name in the credits is a route he would take.

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wigwam
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#27 Post by wigwam » Tue Apr 23, 2013 2:40 am

I really liked this. It's insubstantial and hollow but its sensibilities are keen and it all plays beautifully with a balanced tone and pace. Great central performance, amazing creepy bodyhorror opening sequence, funny and vulnerable love story in the middle, and good if not great or groundbreaking mild mindfuckery in the last act where it falters slightly tying up the wrong loose ends.

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domino harvey
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#28 Post by domino harvey » Wed May 08, 2013 5:21 pm

Upstream Color is good ol' fashioned film Art with a capital A, a gloriously ambitious cinematic cacophony far better than its immediate influences. I'm sure I'll have more to say with regards to theories and explanations after the inevitable repeat viewings, but my immediate response is that like most successful indie puzzle films (Isabel, L'Annulaire, Mulholland Dr, &c), the "What" is less important than the "How." Upstream Color is basically an audio-visual pleasure machine, and good on it and Carruth for engineering the whole experience. It's going to have to be some amazing year for movies to knock this from my top spot!

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warren oates
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#29 Post by warren oates » Wed May 08, 2013 5:56 pm

Imagine the best ever episode of The X-files if it were written by Stanislaw Lem and directed by Chris Marker and you'll start to have some vague idea of the wild and divergent ambitions of Shane Carruth's Upstream Color.

I've seen Upstream Color three times now -- twice in the theater and once on the Blu-ray -- and, though I don't love it madly like I do Primer, this is still my favorite film of the year so far. There are no special features on the Blu-ray/DVD combo, but I'd encourage anyone who's interested to check out these extended interviews with Shane Carruth at the following links: With Jeff Goldsmith at the Q&A and an in-depth interview that covers some different territory in Issue 5 of his magazine Backstory.

This is one of the strongest sophomore efforts I've seen in American Indie film, building on the strengths of Carruth's first film, Primer, but also eclipsing it in almost every dimension -- from the storytelling to all of the technical aspects and even to his own smart self-distribution and tasteful marketing.

Since it's almost impossible to talk about the film in any detail without bringing up potential spoilers, I'm just going to tag the rest of my comments:
SpoilerShow
In the end of that epic podcast linked to above, KCRW's literary critic Michael Silverblatt lauds the film as an accurate depiction of the current state of life in these United States: about a couple who've ruined themselves financially without knowing why, who find themselves disconnected from nature and from themselves and who are inexplicably drawn to each other in search of an honest connection and to try and understand their place in this mess a little better. Anyway, he says it all more articulately. But I agree. Beneath the cool, cerebral exterior, there is something deep and heartfelt and zeitgeisty about this film that's like a good novel. It's serious storytelling that doesn't yield up all its riches on one viewing.

If Primer was about characters caught up in a weirdness they can't stop talking about, the strange circumstances of Upstream Color often leave the characters speechless or groping to communicate experiences just outside their grasp or even their conscious awareness. I especially admire the way the film conveys this so cinematically, where the characters themselves are confused and nonverbal and we experience that reality through them. Carruth has said in interviews that this script sprung in part from his interest in the ways people think of their own life narratives, how they got here from there, where they are going now. There's a collection of Joan Didion's work with the title We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live, which is a nice way to put one of the major themes here.

Jeff admits to Kris that he's a thief, an embezzler, an addict who ruined his marriage by betraying the trust of everyone he knew. And in a way that's a more comfortable, digestible life narrative for him to subscribe to than the less clear one Kris has adopted. You get the feeling that she's not fully buying her present self's label as broken and mentally ill, that she's almost using that diagnosis as a way to keep herself isolated, for fear of finding out what's really going on. And yet she's the one who remains more open to the weirdness of what's happened to both of them, to sussing it out on instinct in spite of her fears. I remember Carruth saying something about how that's an almost admirably feminine approach to solving their shared problem.

I've always appreciated the way that his consumption of much more mainstream storytelling has filtered through Carruth's sensibility. For instance, he's described paranoid thrillers like The Conversation and All The President's Men as key inspirations behind Primer. Spielberg has certainly been on his mind since he wrote A Topiary. And Upstream Color's narrative might be seen as Carruth's idiosyncratic reworking of some of the images and ideas in Close Encounters. The way that the film toys with scenarios like alien abduction (at least in a more abstract sense), psychic connection to places the characters have never been and inexplicable obsessions.

Upstream Color is also like a less visceral, more ethereal take on Cronenbergian body horror. Though unaware of so-called "mind control" drugs like scopolamine before making the film, Carruth says he was thinking about parasites in other species, like the wasps that inject larvae into hosts which proceed to take over their hosts brains. Or the way that feline toxoplasmosis has been shown to alter the minds of rats and may in fact be having some serious neurological impact on humans. So another part of what Upstream Color is about is transposing these parasitic relationships and effects onto his human characters.

The orchid collectors, the Thief and the Sampler all act independently of one another. Each believes they've found a little secret in nature, a kind of biological hack they are exploiting. Yet the chain of processes they set in motion is beyond the grasp of any one link in it. At one point in an earlier draft, Carruth says he had each of the steps in the process taught to the characters we see in the film by a mentor. An almost timeless passing down of secret knowledge.

The film's ending is a kind of minor, tentative inward victory for Kris and perhaps a few of the other characters. There's no huge revelation of greater meaning or clear resolution of how it all comes together narratively. The film refuses to speculate on a practical way forward for any of the characters either. Will they really just drop everything else in their lives and become super-empathic pig farmers so as to nurture their porcine others in profound interconnection for the rest of their collective lives? Hmm. Yet it doesn't really seem the point to dwell on these details. The characters have realized a profound connection -- however it initially came about -- and aren't about to walk away from it. They've gone from dislocation, disconnection, alienation, confusion and the failure of verbal communication to a new community connected without and beyond words.

A few questions about the ending:

Does Kris kill the Sampler to stop the cycle? Because she intuits the whole process of it suddenly? Or just because the only part she knows -- the curing/paring of the humans, plus the drowning of the piglets -- is too much to bear? Or is it because of all that and because of the way the Sampler's unchecked voyeurism has violated all of their lives?

A couple thoughts on the images and sounds:

The camerawork is really great. And the imagery is obviously influenced by filmmakers like Malick and Kubrick without being slavishly imitative. The Kubrickian moving follow shots link disparate characters and places together, though the narrow depth of field is more like some of Michael Mann's later films. The Malick touches are, for the most part, more subtle, about the way nature imagery is captured or about a more elliptical editing style. Though there are a series of shots following characters' hands moving through fields and other spaces that seem like direct homages. If the film's look reminds me of anything -- desaturated, shallow depth of field, obsession with CUs -- it's the exquisite domestic blurs of Uta Barth's still photographs. Anybody know what camera(s) they used?

The sound design is excellent. And it's rare to see a film that has so thoroughly and precisely integrated its sound design into the narrative. Carruth's music continues to be solid and to support his films without standing out as either exceptionally great or obviously amateurish. He's a bit like Hal Hartley in this regard.

Finally, about the budget: Anybody out there have any inkling what this cost? Carruth is being very coy this time around, but insists that we'd be shocked and impressed if we knew. I'm guessing it's under $100,000 and possibly even half that much.
Connections to Primer:
SpoilerShow
The greedily guarded secret life hacks. The way that being privy to these secrets creates an intense existence parallel to but just beneath the surface of everyday life. The obsession with reverse engineering a perfect moment, with being fully in control of one's life narrative. In one of the interviews linked to above, Carruth reflects that he's always been fascinated by the problem of human communication, of making sure he and a friend or lover are truly sharing the same moment, having the same experience.
Connections to A Topiary:
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There's some brief footage from VFX tests Shane Carruth created himself in the early scenes at Kris' office. There's also the shared idea of a fragmentary glimpse of a kind of secret, subtle control mechanism manipulating human behavior just beneath the surface of everyday life. The way the "makers" the kids find evolve and seem to change their intentions along with the kids. The final mind-blowing reveal of the simple agenda they've likely always had running in the background. Someone like Megan Ellison should just give Carruth the money to make this film, preferably in 65mm as he initially conceived it. It's the sort of truly epic thing Spielberg himself might have done if he'd been just a little more visionary like Kubrick. There's really nothing else like A Topiary in science fiction film or literature. Even a rough early draft is better than most sci-fi novels I've ever read.
Last edited by warren oates on Fri May 10, 2013 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Shrew
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#30 Post by Shrew » Wed May 08, 2013 8:37 pm

For me, what really makes this a step up from Primer is the emotional threads which bind the film together. Even when it's totally unclear what the hell is going on (which is often), the film still maintains a clear emotional or intuitive logic. And such subject matter fits the elliptical structure, cause what's harder to explain in a rational cause-effect narrative than emotion? Meanwhile Primer struck me as an intellectual exercise about ethics in time travel, and its obliqueness a gimmick (though a well-used one).

That said, I can't see this taking on the cult level of Primer, precisely because it resists turning into a Rubik's cube with any one set solution.

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warren oates
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#31 Post by warren oates » Wed May 08, 2013 9:07 pm

Shrew wrote:Meanwhile Primer struck me as an intellectual exercise about ethics in time travel, and its obliqueness a gimmick (though a well-used one).
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It's a cautionary tale about two friends with day jobs they dislike, who never have enough time to do what they want, literally make more time by accident and ironically find themselves spending all of their time pursing, accruing and dealing with the ramifications of that new spare time until it finally destroys their friendship.
It's not a love story but it's hardly a cold Borgesian puzzle. I've seen the charts and detailed diagrams and I take issue with those who argue that Primer's so neatly solvable. You can tease out certain threads and timelines with repeat viewings, but there's a point where the film folds into itself, remaining mysterious and ultimately unknowable. In Primer why things are happening isn't the mystery so much as exactly what happens.* Upstream Color is pretty straightforward in comparison. My friends and I were mostly clear about what happens after a first viewing. After a few more, why it was happening became a little more clear. But the why in Upstream Color like the what in Primer will remain obscure.

*Or from another perspective:
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Exactly who it's all happening to.
Last edited by warren oates on Wed May 08, 2013 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#32 Post by knives » Wed May 08, 2013 9:10 pm

warren oates wrote:
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Exactly who it's all happening to.
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Isn't that at least traceable via the flatworm maze?

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Sonmi451
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#33 Post by Sonmi451 » Thu May 09, 2013 12:07 pm

It will certainly take something special to displace this from my top spot for the year as well, considering it was one of the most transcendent experiences I have ever had watching film. It is a near perfect exploration of the human condition, from mindless/coerced consumerism, to our search for meaning, to our creation of conscious (and unconscious) fictions in order to cope, to our corruption and branding of nature as we've tried to harness it for our own ends. It's all of that and so much more.

I was actually quite surprised to read that Carruth initially chose Walden as the primer (if you will) as sort of a happy accident, since I interpreted the film to be very much an ecological statement (it turns out he chose it because, at the time, he considered it suitably turgid for hypnotism). I do think though, that sometime in the process of making the film, Carruth realized what he stumbled upon, since the book and its message of isolation and nature feature so prominently in the finished product. Anyway, this is simply a beautiful, moving, resonant masterpiece.

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warren oates
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#34 Post by warren oates » Thu May 09, 2013 12:25 pm

He does address Walden in the podcast interviews linked to above. And the choice was as you say. First, because he remembered the book as mind-numbingly boring. Then because it fit thematically better than he could have imagined. Before showing the film, Carruth had also never heard of the famous behaviorist B.F. Skinner's speculative sci-fi novel Walden Two, which is interestingly about the environmental and genetic manipulation of humans for the purpose of controlling their behavior.

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Sonmi451
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#35 Post by Sonmi451 » Thu May 09, 2013 2:37 pm

Interesting, I'd of course heard of Walden Two, but have not read it, and didn't realize it overlapped so thematically with Upstream. It's rather amazing in itself that Carruth was not aware of it either.

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Sonmi451
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#36 Post by Sonmi451 » Fri May 10, 2013 11:12 am

I watched this again last night, and caught a couple things I didn't quite get the first time:
SpoilerShow
First, while it's obvious that The Sampler is able to create a psychic/emotional connection from the pigs to their human counterparts, I am wondering if he can actually change their physical reality as well. There is only one instance that I can recall, but it seems pretty blatant: at the same moment that Jeff's pig is being physically removed from the pen and segregated, Jeff is being physically thrown out of his job. Are we led to believe that The Sampler can indeed alter physical reality, or just that the psychic connection is so strong that Jeff himself created the conditions necessary to mirror the same reality?

Also, did anyone happen to notice something like a time travel paradox that Carruth created (perhaps with a nod towards Primer)? So the worms are needed by The Thief to exert mind control over the human victims, the human hosts are needed by The Sampler to transplant into the pigs and create something of a bovine counterpart, and the "infected" pigs' offspring are needed to carry the "infection" upstream, to create the flowers which breed the worms. No one step could have been the first, hence the paradox.

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warren oates
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#37 Post by warren oates » Fri May 10, 2013 11:41 am

Sonmi451 wrote:I watched this again last night, and caught a couple things I didn't quite get the first time:
SpoilerShow
Are we led to believe that The Sampler can indeed alter physical reality, or just that the psychic connection is so strong that Jeff himself created the conditions necessary to mirror the same reality?.
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I'd say that it's more about the strong connection on Jeff's part, which is amplified by his relationship with Kris. Their connection to each other is certainly magnifying their psychic abilities and their connection to their respective pigs. I've always felt the Sampler was more of a voyeur than a puppet master. He's got the power to peer into his altered subjects' lives but not to manipulate them per se. I get the sense that the reason he segregated those two pigs, say the Kris pig and the Jeff pig, was more about wanting to keep the rest of his pen calm.
Sonmi451 wrote:
SpoilerShow
Also, did anyone happen to notice something like a time travel paradox that Carruth created (perhaps with a nod towards Primer)? So the worms are needed by The Thief to exert mind control over the human victims, the human hosts are needed by The Sampler to transplant into the pigs and create something of a bovine counterpart, and the "infected" pigs' offspring are needed to carry the "infection" upstream, to create the flowers which breed the worms. No one step could have been the first, hence the paradox.
SpoilerShow
Like all natural processes that appear to function seamlessly now -- including the symbiotic and parasitic relationships in other species Carruth says he was inspired by -- how this one started remains a mystery. Carruth says he had scenes in an early draft where mentors taught each step in the process (the isolated steps they knew of) to the characters we see in the film. But there was never going to be a pure origin story. And I do think it's possible to see how parts of cycle could happen and gradually become linked together. For example: Perhaps the first pigs were infected by worms themselves and linked together psychically in a way that seemed to make them crazy, hence they were drowned, leading to blue flowers with new worms. The Thief himself has one version of his nature hack down, but he's also still actively experimenting with the worms, inviting neighborhood kids into his place, making a game of it, brewing tea over them to see what powers they produce if they're ingested that way. Likewise with The Sampler. Who knows how he figured out what to do? Maybe it was his interest in music -- those low-end speakers on the ground -- that first drew infected people (and/or animals?) to him, or his father before him?

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warren oates
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#38 Post by warren oates » Fri May 10, 2013 12:11 pm

knives wrote:
warren oates wrote:
SpoilerShow
Exactly who it's all happening to.
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Isn't that at least traceable via the flatworm maze?
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Only in the most general sense. The diagrams don't help pin down which iteration of Aaron or Abe you're dealing with from scene to scene by the end of the film. In the voiceover, even Aaron himself admits confusion about this.

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Sonmi451
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#39 Post by Sonmi451 » Fri May 10, 2013 5:11 pm

Interesting, but regarding:
SpoilerShow
warren oates wrote: I've always felt the Sampler was more of a voyeur than a puppet master. He's got the power to peer into his altered subjects' lives but not to manipulate them per se.
SpoilerShow
How would you then explain the scene where The Sampler is seeing/replaying the conversation between the man and his wife? My interpretation was that he was manipulating the man's memories of the conversation, via the music he was playing, so as to possibly ease his guilt over what happened. It certainly seemed like the The Sampler was taking a more active role in that scene than a simple voyeur.

Also, there is the scene where he is creating the music, causing the human subjects to recreate the sounds in their physical reality, until Kris abruptly stops, which causes The Sampler to scrap that particular "composition". One thing that was rather perplexing about that sequence is how The Sampler could sense what was happening - and indeed react strongly when Kris cut it off - when he was not in contact with the pigs at the time.

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warren oates
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#40 Post by warren oates » Fri May 10, 2013 5:52 pm

SpoilerShow
I suppose I still don't see The Sampler's actions as necessarily manipulative. I'm not convinced there's as much of a direct cause and effect relationship as the one you're seeing. Is Kris being actively controlled by The Sampler or is her expanding consciousness just tuning in to what he's doing (eavesdropping on her experience) more clearly? Is it the fact that Kris stops that causes The Sampler to stop his composition? Or is it more about an awareness of her awareness and the way he's creeped out by that kind of psychic feedback loop, which is likely a new thing for him? Like if your TV suddenly started talking back to you.

I'd have to look at that scene with the man and his wife again. The way I've been taking it so far is that it's about The Sampler's attempts to get inside the intensity of the man's emotions and to capture that in his music.

It does seem like The Sampler has found a way to tune in to all of his human/pig subjects, regardless of his physical distance from them, doesn't it? The film doesn't make clear how he's doing that (has he infected/altered himself too?) or what, if anything, this has to do with his sound collection and music making (other than this: that the emotions and experiences seem to inspire his compositions and that the sound draws infected humans to him in the first place).

Maybe The Sampler is actually interested in literally playing them all like an instrument? To me, though, it feels more like he's writing down the music of their lives.

I do hope some others jump into this discussion too!

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#41 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Fri May 10, 2013 5:54 pm

Are you two really trying to establish logical causal relationships in a fictional universe in which mind control parasites steal peoples souls and establish telepathic links between their original hosts, adorable piglets, and a bald musique concrete composer? Christ, it's a metaphor, and a silly one at that. Look too closely and it will only get sillier and less logical.

It's turning into a goddamned Star Trek convention around here.

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domino harvey
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#42 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 10, 2013 5:57 pm

Yes, no one examine closely or discuss seriously a film on the film discussion board

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#43 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Fri May 10, 2013 6:24 pm

domino harvey wrote:Yes, no one examine closely or discuss seriously a film on the film discussion board
It doesn't take one of the Primer scientists to see that Upstream Color is riddled with plot holes and that the premise is wholly nonsensical. Which is not to say meaningless, but freeze-frame the movie until the world ends and you still won't be any closer to making it conform to causal rules. By all means, discuss the staging, script, or the significance of the sci-fi plot devices, but leave out all this bogus speculation about whether the piggies dream of electric sheep, and whether the bald guy can hear those dreams, and whether he'll release them on vinyl.

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#44 Post by warren oates » Fri May 10, 2013 6:55 pm

We can only discuss what Ferdinand Griffon wants us to discuss. We can't like this film too much since he didn't. We can't want to think more about it since he hasn't.

Did somebody get up on the wrong side of life this Friday or what? You really seem to have trouble articulating anything beyond that you didn't like the film. How is it that, in your mind, for instance, it's okay for us to discuss the "significance of the sci-fi plot devices" but we're strictly verboten from teasing out any of the story's own "causal rules" that either follow directly from those fictional devices or that might otherwise be implied in the narrative? You should know better than to hijack a thread when all you've got to say is: "This film sucks! Y'all wasting you're time talking about it!" If you're not interested in or prepared to elaborate on your problems with the film in detail, why are you even posting here? There are plenty of other threads and other films to watch.

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#45 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Fri May 10, 2013 7:33 pm

You're making an awful lot of assumptions, WarrenOates. I don't hate the film, I don't want you or Domino or anyone else to stop discussing it, and I've thought about it a great deal.

I'm sorry for phrasing my plea as a dictum, but it drives me nuts to see a good conversation devolve into a wild goose chase. I'd love to see some in depth examination of the film's wide variety of thematic touchstones and striking technical execution rather than conspiracy theory and plot diagramming. As you've said elsewhere in the forum, superlative filmmaking can plug any plot hole in the world. But refuse to call a spade a spade and you'll lose track of all the other cards in the deck as well. You're never going to find out why or how the composer can or would mind control people through pig-parasite-proxies. On the other hand, you could try and figure out what it might mean for him to do so, or any of the limitless other questions this and any other film asks its audience.

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domino harvey
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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#46 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 10, 2013 7:38 pm

This is a puzzling film and part of the appeal of such a structure is figuring out a basic causal relationship between events. I understand a preference for discussion that focuses on craft, but it is unfair and uncalled for to demand others not engage in discussing the plot just because you deem it too silly to merit focus.

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#47 Post by warren oates » Fri May 10, 2013 8:38 pm

FerdinandGriffon, it's starting to sound like you haven't actually read this whole thread. If that's true, then before berating us collectively for what we're supposedly not talking about, why not go back and read it? Then click on the link that a few of us have posted and listen to the podcast. Then try to say the same thing you just said -- that nobody's talking about the film's themes or its technical aspects.

Anyway, you can't have it both ways. You can't hang out here and proclaim that Upstream Color is piss-poorly written, except on the level of theme, which is all that you, Ferdinand Griffon, wish to discuss about it (though you haven't yet). How dare Shane Carruth have paid so much attention to the details of his mysterious sci-fi premise that other people care about it in a way you would never personally deign to? How dare they actually invest their imagination in a space where you'd instead prefer to flaunt your intellect?

If you care to enlighten us, please explain precisely how our interest in the details of the film's story world cheapens Upstream Color, betrays its true intentions, etc. Tell us how our admiration of Shane Carruth's storytelling, of how he deftly teases us with what's happening before, during and after what we see on-screen is all beside the point. Tell us how caring about and discussing that is in direct opposition to understanding (as you put it): "what it might mean for him to do so, or any of the limitless other questions this or any film asks its audience." Tell us how we should speak only of the filmmaking technique and the meaning of its lofty thematic ideas, skipping over the narrative entirely, never mind that we're discussing a narrative feature film?

Much as I agree with just about everything domino's written, I take issue with the idea that Sonmi and I were merely discussing the "plot." The way I see it, we're discussing the whole of the story, not just the simple list of events depicted in the film. Part of the reason it's clearly so compelling for us is because Upstream Color's tale is sufficiently mysterious, thoughtfully imagined and interestingly wrought that we're able to conceive of story elements that may have taken place off-screen -- before, during or after the events depicted in the film. How that's not relevant, in a film that is deliberately elliptical on any number of levels, is beyond me.

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Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#48 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Sat May 11, 2013 2:29 am

Domino, I agree that to demand anything was uncalled for.

Warren oates, you have an infuriating habit of making assumptions about your interlocutors that you have no reason or right to make. I've read the thread. Though I know you've read my remarks, your responses to them give the opposite impression. I never said that nobody's talking about the film's themes or technical aspects. I said that the conversation was getting derailed into a swamp of spoiler boxes that a modicum of focused thought could avoid. Earlier in the thread several people other than myself said that the sci-fi aspect of the film wasn't really causally coherent, and I'd agree with them that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can make poetic, allegorical, metaphorical, pataphysical or nonsensical sense without making causal sense. I also never proclaimed that the film is "piss-poorly" written. It's a hybrid film/script/narrative, borrowing elements from a lot of different genres and styles, and some of these elements, especially the rom-com and suspense film ones, are handled very well. I even kinda like the sci-fi stuff, while still being able to recognize that it doesn't have any real logic.
warren oates wrote:How dare Shane Carruth have paid so much attention to the details of his mysterious sci-fi premise that other people care about it in a way you would never personally deign to? How dare they actually invest their imagination in a space where you'd instead prefer to flaunt your intellect?
Tautologies and more ad hominem slurs. No thanks.

If you really want to know how looking too closely at a plot hole in the hopes that it will turn into a diamond ring can cheapen the experience of the film, stump yourself with the following questions:
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If the Sampler can't mind control, then how does Chris end up at his trailer in the middle of the night? If the Sampler can mind control, then why doesn't he separate Kris and Jeff that way? If he can and he chooses not to, then why not, as the traumatic introduction of the parasite is already an invasion of privacy, to say the least. How does he access memories? Why can't he mind control if that's what the Thief could do with the infected hosts? What gives him this superpower in the first place? Is he in cahoots with the Thief? If so, then why doesn't the thief just drop Kris off at the trailer? If not, then how the heck could this efficient system have been set up in the first place, and why doesn't the thief remove the parasite, a trace of his crime, himself? If the Kris and Jeff pigs nuzzle together when Kris and Jeff nuzzle, does Jeff-pig cry when Jeff cries, does Kris-pig scratch its nose when Kris scratches her nose?
The film quickly becomes a series of endless, unanswerable, and inane questions about a system that never made any sense and never needed to make any sense. Galaxy Quest makes a lot of good jokes about this kind of thinking, the best being that the fans of the fictional TV show go so far down a rabbit hole of their own creation that they end up more familiar with the workings of an imaginary spaceship than the men and women who ostensibly manned and designed it. Which turns out well for them in a Tim Allen movie, but could be less useful on an internet forum.
I never said filmmaking technique and "lofty" thematic ideas were the only things worth talking about, nor that plot or narrative should not be discussed. I just pointed out that one small part of a much larger narrative fabric makes no causal sense, and that I'll stand by until the day that pigs fly/can act as mind control proxies. If you'd like to know, the silly metaphor I was referring to earlier was:
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the Sampler as a voyeuristic, Old Testament God, who can see into the souls of his flock, keeps them in a state of ignorance about their true condition, and punishes his Adam and Eve when they commit the sin of falling in love. The other level of this allegory would be the God figure as also representing the voyeurism and enormous pressures of contemporary American middle-class society, which also punishes its members for not resigning themselves to sudden economic and professional disasters, for struggling with mental and emotional problems, and for falling in love with risky mates. Maybe I'm completely off the deep end with all that, but the sampler inarguably has God-like powers, and the inscrutability and lack of discernable human logic to his actions also fits. God works in mysterious ways, etc. Plus, it would make sense considering Carruth's love of Malick, made obvious by Upstream Color's shooting and editing strategies, which are basically supercharged, sped up versions of Tree of Life's.

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warren oates
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:16 pm

Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#49 Post by warren oates » Sat May 11, 2013 4:20 am

If you really want to know how looking too closely at a plot hole in the hopes that it will turn into a diamond ring can cheapen the experience of the film, stump yourself with the following questions
If you don't care and you choose to prejudge the act of asking such questions as stupid, they'll surely come out sounding stupid in your recounting, like the caricatures you've concocted above. It's abundantly clear that you're neither interested in the narrative as such, nor respecting the imagination that the writer-director put into it or that some viewers feel is worth reciprocating.
I even kinda like the sci-fi stuff, while still being able to recognize that it doesn't have any real logic... The film quickly becomes a series of endless, unanswerable, and inane questions about a system that never made any sense and never needed to make any sense.
Now there's an entirely debatable proposition. Frankly, I think your whole position is redunkulous. You're really trying to assert that because this narrative film is poetic, philosophical, mysterious, elliptical, elusive, even intentionally allegorical, that viewers therefore should not be free to take it equally seriously as a coherent fictional world on its own terms with its own internal logic (however obscure or ultimately unknowable some parts of it may be)? Because why? Because you say so? Man, I'm glad I didn't have you as an English teacher. The ones I did have nearly killed my love of stories. You would have made sure to annihilate it.

It seems like you're suffering from the huge misimpression that an interest in the specific details of the Upstream Color's fictional world somehow equates with the reductive view that it's first, last and only a puzzle narrative -- and one that I'm out to somehow "solve."
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the Sampler as a voyeuristic, Old Testament God, who can see into the souls of his flock, keeps them in a state of ignorance about their true condition, and punishes his Adam and Eve when they commit the sin of falling in love. The other level of this allegory would be the God figure as also representing the voyeurism and enormous pressures of contemporary American middle-class society, which also punishes its members for not resigning themselves to sudden economic and professional disasters, for struggling with mental and emotional problems, and for falling in love with risky mates.
You know, if you wanted to share, you could have just posted that last bit hours ago and spared us all the huffing and puffing in between. It's easy enough to ascribe some god-like qualities to The Sampler and something I've certainly read elsewhere. Of course, you might want to go check the Bible or at least Wikipedia before you get too married to an elaborate religious interpretation. Adam and Eve's original sin isn't to fall in love, it's to eat at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But, hey, that's the cool thing about declaring the ethereal realm of theme as the one most worthy of your consideration -- you don't have to be too concerned with the details.

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Sonmi451
Joined: Fri Nov 02, 2012 2:07 pm

Re: Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

#50 Post by Sonmi451 » Sat May 11, 2013 11:41 am

I find it rather ironic that FerdinandGriffon laments the derailment of the conversation. By all means, lets keep talking about talking about what we can/should be talking about, instead of actually talking about it.

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