Everything is interconnected, but though we may occasionally see, occasionally feel, occasionally hear or occasionally sense these connections that doesn’ mean we necessarily understand them. Upstream Color is an audiovisual feast, a film that provides equal space for each of these senses, and for the cumulative effect of putting them together. At first it seems like a curious amalgamation of images, of vague ideas that hint at much but never really define themselves. But repeated viewings draw out meanings that to be fair are little more than hypothesises.
Upstream Color is the second film from US director Shane Carruth, his first Primer was made for $7,000 and won him the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance over a decade ago. Here he’ written, directed, produced, played the lead character, photographed and wrote the score. It’s very clearly a singular vision without any outside interference. There are no stars in this film, it’s low budget, yet this is no way an impediment. There hasn’ been a story this original combined with a cinematic technique this fascinating in years.
The narrative in Upstream Color isn’ designed necessarily to provide answers; in fact it’s loose, with seemingly unconnected events that exist on the edge of meaning. Its narrative looseness is simultaneously vexing and beguiling. We desperately want to know what’s happening, but there is some welcome consolation in just letting this work of art wash over you. In this sense you could draw links to the recent poetic work of Terrence Malick (Tree of Life), or French director Philippe Grandrieux’ (Un Lac) use of abstract images to tell a story through tone and sound design. In their hands, and in Carruth’ too, cinema has the ability to capture and transmit emotion, bypassing the rational parts of our brain and in a sense becoming more powerful, and more lasting.
Upstream Color seems to be about starting from scratch, about reformulating your identity, and questioning who you are or were, and what makes you who you think you are. It’s grappling with questions of identity and interconnection, between people, between species, between the earth and life itself. It’s all one big existential philosophical emotional musing. But at it’s heart it’s a woozy dreamlike unconventional love story about two people finding each other, about being drawn together and falling in love. The pig farmer who’ also a sampler/ sound designer, the man who uses termites to separate people from their finances, they’re all links in the chain.
Carruth’ score is intrinsically linked to the narrative thanks to the character of the sampler who samples field recordings and uses midi to compose the sounds` into delicate drones and processed electronics. In this sense the sound design and the score are linked, and it’s such a tactile film, where there’ real wide eyed sense of wonder that applies equally to both sound and image. Carruth is particularly adept at emotional swells of ambient sound that rise like strings and reflect the subjective experience of the characters. Carruth reports composing the music while writing the script and you can hear a singular voice irrevocably attuned to, well whatever it is that is happening.
At the beginning of the film a man carries a paper linked chain, seemingly made by a child to the bin and throws it out with a bag full of rubbish, and throughout the remainder of Upstream Color Carruth finds and charts his own links. Whether it’s a metaphor, an illusion, an allegory or something we’re not meant to understand, Upstream Color is a bold and original form of filmmaking. It’s cinema not just to be watched but experienced…and then perhaps decoded.
