Upstream Color (Shane Carruth) [127.5 points / 12 votes]
"In Upstream Color, Shane Carruth introduces the world to a new form of identity theft. It’s extraordinarily outlandish yet still deeply upsetting.
A young woman named Kris, played with wounded grace by Amy Seimetz, is out one night when she’s suddenly, randomly assaulted. Physically subdued by her unnamed attacker, she’s then force-fed a drug-infused worm that puts her in a hypnotic trance.
Kris wakes up in her car at some later point, and soon discovers that her life is a shambles. Her fulfilling job is gone because she can’t explain her absence to her employer. She has no memory of the random tasks she was asked to perform, the multiple trips she made to banks and ATMs, or the surgery she underwent to remove the mind-controlling parasite and transfer it to the body of a pig. Along with her entire net worth, the attacker has stolen her time and her sense of self-trust, leaving nothing but a near-crippling sense of violation.
What’s the source of the plant from which the drug is derived? Why are worms required as a delivery device and pigs used as a follow-up host? What does the pigs’ caretaker, a nearly wordless character named The Sampler, have to do with the mind control and money scam? How do electronic music and Thoreau’s Walden figure into all this? Damned if I can say for sure. But the discreet charms of Carruth’s mind-boggling second feature have nothing to do with total clarity and everything to do with total trust – between two lost characters, and between artist and audience.
He gives us two relatable emotions to cling to as we make our way through the oblique narrative: the greed of the theft and the love that resurrects Kris and the man she meets on a train, Carruth’s Jeff, who puts up a better front but is just as damaged. Beyond that, we’re left to make our own connections, grasp our individual meanings, and bask through multiple viewings in its enduring mysteries.
I’m not much of a subscriber to the term “auteur,” but Carruth earns it as writer-producer-director-cinematographer-editor-composer-star. He reveals images that can be coldly clinical or a sun-dappled gold, put together in cleanly severed, occasionally overlapping bits to an insidiously affecting soundtrack.
An existential puzzle that’s genuinely romantic and get-under-your-skin horrific, the film touches on the fragility of memory and identity, the perils of the material world and the unspoken traumas that connect us. The rhythms and organic chemistry that develop between Carruth and Seimetz give this mindfuck a warm human heart. Rare and remarkable is the movie that not only makes you scratch your head, but also shed a tear." -- Melissa Starker
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