Upstream Color is currently available on VOD as well as for purchase on DVD and Blu-Ray. This review is a spoiler-filled review and I would like to warn all readers as such.

First, hopefully you read the above note of this being a spoiler filled review. While I barely enjoy writing spoilers in reviews for the fact that I think reviews should be written to advise readers on whether they should go and watch a film or not, somehow my desire to write about this film outweighs my inability to express myself on it without going into details. Also, for a film like this I doubt there is anyone out there who knows of it that hasn’t already decided whether they want to see it, and it’s available easily. I highly recommend the film and hope you see it, then return to comment on it below.

In 2004 Shane Carruth released upon the world the film that has defined time travel for the independent world of cinema in Primer. Nine years later he’s returned with a film that while discussing, or more correctly acknowledging a scientific side of things, is everything but that with Upstream Color.

In the first twenty minutes of this film we see Kris (Amy Seimetz) being taken and force fed a worm(?) via a inhaler and then under a form a mind control following. This unseen force that controls her completely manages to make her withdraw all funds she has available and give to him until she is no longer useful and leaves her alone in pain. It is only after she finds him that he removes this controlling force (worm?) and transplanting it into a pig. At this point we discover that he has a pen filled with pigs, that we can only assume correlate to many other instances of this happening.

With all this over Kris awakens at home with her life in shambles and is fired from her current job (which she happened to be absent from for many days, during this robbery) and unable to explain it all as it seems she does not recall any of it, other than the aftermath that she now sees. One day she meets Jeff (Shane Carruth) and manages to create a relationship with him, only to eventually find that he happened to have a similar series of events happen to him which left him on thin ice with his employers which is why he professional life is one of complete mystery.

The film then follows Jeff and Kris as they try to figure out this odd attraction as well as we observe the after effects of this event that happened to the two of them. At the same time we’re introduced this man, who has no name in the film but is titled ‘The Sampler’ on IMDb, (Andrew Sensenig) and his farm of pigs as he continues his work in numerous fields of study. Through the sampler we see the pigs and how they end up directly affecting Kris and Jeff in their lives, even ending up in their own romantic entanglement in the farm.

To use the word hypnotic as it relates to the first third of this film would be more than on the nose. Where we see the Sampler giving instructions to Kris in a tone that is as important as asking someone to pick up the newspaper and seeing her unable to be tired or hungry due to it is astounding and grabs the viewer by the balls immediately. Even more is how Carruth makes us fall into that trance like state where everything the Sampler says becomes applicable to us as well. He speaks of how his brain was made of parts of the sun and therefore we are unable to look at his face directly and we see this light source from the corner of the screen making us (as well as Kris) unable to look at him is mesmerizing.

However, this film truly starts when we get past the initial ‘robbery’ and on to following Kris and Jeff in their lives post these events. The film continues to compile a series of effects of this happening in a way that feels algorithmic. As if Carruth has a formula in his home on the side of every page of script denoting why each of these anomalies are happening. Why Jeff and Kris become so attracted in the first place, why she ends up being ‘diagnosed’ (with some unnamed thing) that puts her medication, why they eventually start to blend their own pasts and are unable to distinguish each other somehow. These are all side-effects of being put through this experiment and are barely explained because unlike the process that the Sampler puts these people through this side of the experiment was never truly documented — as far as we know — and is new ground to not only the Sampler but us as well.

However, we do see a series of new things happening with the Sampler as he sits with his pigs and ‘mind melds’ with each one to visit the happenings of his victims from time to time. It appears as if he’s turning channels on his television and just peeking into the world that he’s ruined, but we are never privy as to why he’s checking in, as it were. Is he assuring his safety? Is he looking to find that perfect sandwich? Is he just being a voyeuristic pervert hoping to catch someone having sex? We never know and it’s never explained, mainly because as a character he has maybe two lines of dialogue and it has nothing to do with the story. He just walks around his farm picking up mail, recording rocks hitting the ground, and obviously stealing money from random people.

So to begin with the question of what this all means is difficult to say the least. A sense of meaning is warranted by the viewer but more than anything else I want to talk about this half-hearted revenge. While it’s understandable happening, with what the Sampler did to Kris, and the others, it comes out of nowhere. Given this one vague moment where Kris is able to enter this weird connection to the Sampler, as he is “mind melding” with Jeff’s pig and Kris with the Sampler’s music, she magically appears at his farm with a gun in hand to deliver her judgement. It’s beyond odd, it’s almost wrapping up things for the sake of it as opposed to getting to the point organically.

As I come to the end of this post, not because I’ve said all I can, but I feel I’m running out of words to type, I don’t know if I’ve actually helped or hurt understand what’s happening in this movie, but one thing is for sure, I do enjoy it a lot. I find the idea of bringing romance into this weird science-fiction film about the cyclical nature of life — as we see the opening shot of the plants to the scene of the child pigs thrown in the river to die and become flowers (which I didn’t mention at all) — and dashing in a twinge of revenge was good. Was it a life changing movie that helped make me not do something stupid in my day tomorrow? I doubt it. But how many movies can I hold up to that standard? Ikiru, that’s it.

What do you think of Upstream Color?