AUTUMN FILM Special AUTUMN FILM Specicial
TRUE
COLOURS
Upstream Colour is one of the most alluring and enigmatic fi lms in years. In an attempt to unlock the riches of Shane Carruth’s remarkable piece of cinema we asked three critics: what on earth does the fi lm mean?
(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)
EDDIE HARRISON As a critic, the best cinema experiences are frequently those found alongside a paying audience, and ideally without prior knowledge of the i lm’s content. I sat down in the intellectually austere environs of the IFC in Greenwich Village to watch Upstream Colour with no real idea of what the i lm was about, other than my previous exposure to the lofty time-travel paradigms of writer/director Shane Carruth’s i rst i lm Primer. Ninety minutes later, I was none the wiser, having wrestled my way through an aesthetically beautiful set of images that left me, and the dazzled, muttering customers around the cinema, captivated but utterly bafl ed.
The opening sequences, in which young woman Kris (Amy Seimetz) is seemingly transplanted with some kind of tiny worm which allows her actions to be controlled by several shadowy male i gures, seemed to suggest some kind of David Cronenberg sci-i puzzle. But after about twenty minutes, a completely different narrative appears to emerge, as Kris begins a romantic relationship with fellow victim Jeff (Carruth), with the action intercut with impenetrable goings on at a pig farm. That the actions of the humans and the pigs are in some way linked becomes vaguely apparent, and Upstream Colour ends with a violent confrontation that seems to suggest the protagonists had experienced and successfully revolted against some kind of mind-control experiment. Reading
message boards and interviews with the director afterwards, it soon emerged that I was not the only one who had been moved, manipulated and eventually confounded by the i lm. The oddest thing about Upstream Colour was that the experience of watching, then researching and discussing the content of the i lm with other viewers, actually mirrored the events contained in the i lm. Finding out afterwards that the characters were called Thief or Sampler provides a foothold on what’s going on, but these titles are not featured in the i lm until the i nal credits, and so the weighty theories offered about what’s happening are only possible in hindsight. Like the best puzzle i lms, from Last Year In Marienbad or Duncan Jones’ Moon, Upstream Colour refuses to
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22 Aug–19 Sep 2013 THE LIST 19