by: Uel Ceballos
Shane Carruth has deeply engrossed
me to the ambit of his film Upstream Color as its baffling twist captivated me
right from the very start. Most often than not, I find experimental films to be
manipulative in its abstract domination, injecting the cunning style of film to
flummox the viewers but with a little success to stir them both mentally and
emotionally. However, Upstream Color is far way different. It is experimental
in a perplexing way of film art but at the same time comprehensive of all the entrancing
emotions that would hold the viewers’ interest from start to finish. Upstream
Color is visually stunning, mind challenging and emotionally satisfying – it will
get you fully occupied with its involved narrative.
Upstream Color is the life’s
story of two individuals whose paths are intertwined with the same mishap. Jeff
and Kris are both victims of the parasites that are engendered by the man who
is casted in the film as “The Sampler”. Another victimizer is involved, “The
Thief” who is shown in the beginning of the movie drugging Kris to hypnotize
her and steal her fortunes. The film has incorporated the parasitic creatures
as the drugging element that would draw the main characters together in a certain sort
of odd familiarity. The use of pigs in the film wherein the “Sampler” has
performed operations to connect the identity of the person to his or her new
pig counterpart is also a bewildering spectacle. Shane Carruth has added a
precious treasure to the list of remarkable Science Fiction films, of which who
knows may actually happen somewhere in the future. Okay you may don’t want to
imagine it anyway, having and feeling the roundworms visibly crawling beneath
your skins then a stranger would perform an operation on you and you’ll just
find yourself sharing your individuality with a pig.
This may sound disgusting to you,
but Upstream Color is a must-see movie that demonstrated science being weaved to
the dramatic existence of two people. I can’t stand the sight of all crawling
creatures especially the like of nematodes and its other relatives. I’m having
goose bumps in seeing a bunch of them than in seeing a certified ghastly horror
film. But then I got hold of its
relevance to the film’s science element and braved their appearances on the movie
and I never regret that I did. If I stopped from there I wouldn’t be able to
see the full of the movie wherein a different kind of love story is eventually
developed between the victims, Jeff and Kris.
Not everybody’s sort of love
story, but this is definitely one of the sweetest and most moving depictions of
love that I have ever seen. The parasites encounter has placed Jeff and Kris on
such wreckage wherein they end up grasping endlessly for the missing fragments
of their identity. But on such ruins they have found one another, and with
their mental condition failing them due to unknown traumatic and confusing
experiences from their past, they have come to a relationship tied strongly by bond
of true love. This bond is not supported by any rational ideas as they have
seemed to adrift forever in the mystery of their past, but they face things together despite the uncertainties, clutching mainly to their sense of feeling because that's the most trustworthy instinct that they got. Jeff and Kris live their lives with the undetermined past haunting and torturing them, they force their way to move forward hoping against hope that they soon unlock the elusive secrecy before they get completely estranged from their sanity.
A beautiful American experimental film that would make you wish to see more of Shane Carruth's films and his incorporation of science and abstract film style.
