6/10
Shane Carruth's first feature, Primer, gets talked about a lot in "must see messed-up movie" discussions, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. Primer came out almost 10 years ago and this is Carruth's first movie since, in which he directs, stars, produces, edits, and composes the score for - and probably some other things in there too. I don't know if Carruth has been working constantly on Upstream Color in the years since Primer but it's clearly a labor of love and no doubt took a hell of a lot of work to put together, and as a standalone achievement of independent cinema, it's very impressive.
As a movie, I was a little more underwhelmed, especially given the heavy critical acclaim it's getting. I started out quite enamored with it but found my interest waning as the story went on. Despite the movie's experimental, non-linear style, it feels less like an aesthetic choice to complement the happenings on screen and more like a device to mask what's actually a pretty straight-forward (although certainly bizarre) plot. I checked Wikipedia after to see if I was missing some grand metaphor or something that would really make everything click together and it wasn't the case, there was just less to the eye than I thought there was. Or would be.
I felt like Carruth was channeling Terrence Malick pretty heavily, which is a dangerous thing for anyone to attempt, but he pulls it off well - the whole movie has a dreamy, surrealist atmosphere (aided in large part by the score, which fits perfectly) that could certainly feel a lot more clunky in the hands of a less deft filmmaker.
I didn't really love Upstream Color but I'm glad it exists and I'm glad Shane Carruth exists and hopefully he keeps making movies like this because, if nothing else, he's certainly an interesting voice and I'm sure I'll see eye-to-eye with him sooner or later. Maybe even as soon as Primer, which I'll now have to investigate.
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