Imagine you are seated in a large lecture hall. There is a professor
with his back to the classroom working on some great math problem on a large
chalkboard. It may be physics, it may be calculus, or it may be something else
entirely. You are not sure. You are not well versed in the symbols on the
board. However, by the methodical and confident way the professor draws the
images you cannot help but surmise that behind the incomprehensible language there
is some sort of logic and that the professor is of some sort of intelligence.
So intrigued by the possibility of understanding, you sit back in your seat and
wait for the professor to turn around and start explaining his work. And you
wait. And you wait. And you wait some more. And then at last the professor
stops his incessant scribbling, he steps back to survey his work, and he leaves
the room. And he never comes back. The End.
Let me explain what I was doing there. That was a metaphor for what it
feels like to watch “Upstream Color,” a movie whose apparent technical
expertise is rendered pointless by its confounding lack of storytelling. I bet
you can find many reviews out there that purport to understand what is going on
in this movie and what it all “means.” Take it from me, they are all guessing
and if they have figured it out they probably know more about the movie than
the director/writer/star Shane Carruthers. Excuse me, but I insist that the
director be the smartest person in the room. This isn’t the MOMA where
half-asssed incomplete artwork is set upon a pedestal by self-important critics
who find it okay to do the artist’s work for them. And besides if it was the
enjoyment of a movie should not require the reading of a half-dozen essays
about what it all means. It should be able to stand-alone supported by the
strength of its own merit. I paid for a movie not a homework assignment.
If you had to pick a genre for this movie it would probably be science
fiction, in that it contains things that no present technology can accomplish.
A suspension of disbelief is required for all science fiction but all good
science fiction has at least one thing in common. The technologies invented for
the story have rules and work logically. So even if it is implausible, its
function is predictable and it serves the themes of the movie. Think of the
process of extraction of ideas in “Inception,” or the brain portal in “Being
John Malkovich,” or the process of time travel in “Source Code.” The technology
in “Upstream Color” and how it works and why it is important to work the way it
does is never explained. And if it were explained, the explanation would
probably be completely arbitrary. A man grows lilacs. In the roots of these
lilacs are worms. He collects these worms and sells them as drugs. The drug is
a powerful narcotic that induces a very strong hypnotic state. The victim is
kidnapped and instructed to read Walden, stack poker chips, drink water, make
paper chains, and hand over all their money. The thief leaves and the bug grows
to an extraordinary length inside the victim’s body. A man on a pig farm hundreds
of miles away pumps from large speakers strong pulsating beats into the ground.
The victim feels this and travels hundreds of miles to the farm. At the pig
farm, the man performs a very painful extraction that pulls the now three or
four foot long worm out of the victim’s ankle and deposits it into the heart of
a pig. The victim wakes up in her car in the middle of the highway somewhere
and does not remember anything from the past several weeks. The pig is named
after the victim (Kris) and for the rest of the movie, even years after the
fact, the victim will feel whatever the pig is feeling. If you would like an
answer as to why this happens or how this is possible too bad. You may as well
ask why the movie is titled “Upstream Color.” It has nothing to do with
anything else unless you can count its arbitrariness itself as a concurrent
theme in the movie, which I absolutely refuse to do.
Here is a good example of how little anything matters in connection to
anything else. The thief steals several thousand dollars and it is shown that
he has done this over and over again to many many people. He’s got quite a lot
of pigs on the farm. Why is he doing this? Because it does not look like he is
spending the money on anything. By the way if this ever happens to you, then
pay attention, here is what you do to figure everything out. You immediately
get rid of all evidence that you were robbed. You don’t call the police. You
lie to your employers about why you missed two weeks of work. You will lose
your job but don’t worry; it’s all part of the process. Never mind trying to
get to the bottom of it. Just spend several years lost wondering what happened
to your life. Now start methodically swimming laps at the local gym at night
when nobody else is around. Go ahead and dump a bucket of rocks into the deep
end. Pick them up two at a time from the bottom of the swimming pool while
reciting passages from “Walden.” Do this about a thousand times until the magic
lilac branch appears in the bottom of the pool. Give it a tug, like four or
five times. It will sound like a gong. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that.
Anyway what were you expecting? A chime sound? Please, let’s not be silly. At
last, now you have the exact coordinates of the pig farm. Go kill the bastard
that did this to you.
Do not be fooled by the so-called technical expertise of this movie. It
may seem like it has good cinematography, or good editing, or good music or
whatever, but such a distinction fails to take into consideration the most
important element of what makes such things “good.” Cinematography, editing,
and music are merely tools used by the moviemaker in furtherance of telling a
story. If they do not help to tell the story than they have failed at what was
their main charge and by default should be considered bad. To praise it would
be like critiquing a shoddily built chair and remarking that the table saw used
to put together such a disgrace to furniture was a very good table saw.
I have no patience or sympathy for this type of movie. There is a
difference between a movie that is complex and a movie that is actually
impossible to follow and there is a difference between a movie that contains
ambiguity and one that is actually arbitrary. The test is whether any amount of
thinking will allow the viewer to understand what is going on. And I submit
that no amount of thinking will allow you to comprehend “Upstream Color.” Those
that do claim an understanding are imagining the emperor’s clothes.
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