Post by klep on Aug 15, 2016 6:53:54 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 8/15: Upstream Color
Many people find Upstream Color to be an entirely inscrutable film. It's easy to understand why. Shane Carruth, who plays Jeff in addition to directing, is almost pathologically uninterested in making it clear what is going on. He doesn't cheat - the pieces are there for you to put together a pretty good picture - but he shows as little as he can get away with.
But when I said Carruth is uninterested in making it clear what is going on, that's because he's not making a movie about what happens; he's making a movie about the people it happens to. He's making a movie about Kris (Amy Seimetz) and to a lesser degree Jeff as they struggle to deal with a deep trauma. We see what happens to Kris, and it's pretty terrible. She's assaulted, drugged, and coerced into giving up all she has to the man who assaults her. She hurts herself trying to get the worm out of her body, and then has it drawn out of her in a lengthy procedure. When she finally comes back to her senses, she's not certain what happened but her life is ruined; she's lost her job and is destitute.
Just think about how that must feel. You wake up one day in a highway median with strange injuries, and when you get back you find that your life is destroyed, and you're the one who destroyed it. You don't know what happened or how; it's a complete mystery and no one is sympathetic to you. It's no surprise that Kris is so thorny when she and Jeff first meet. And it's no surprise that Carruth finds this situation so much more interesting than the specifics of who, what, and why. He gives us a thief, a drug/worm, and The Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), but all that he really drives home about them is the connections that the worm creates.
Carruth shows at the beginning of the film that a drug derived from the worms creates intense connections between two people, and we see that The Sampler uses this property to create a connection between the people he takes the worms out of, and the pigs he puts them in. And this re-traumatizes both Kris and Jeff. The Sampler plays music for his pigs, and Kris & Jeff hear inexplicable sounds. Worst of all they feel every bit of the trauma, stress, and danger when The Sampler splits up their pigs and kills their piglets.
They don't understand why these things are happening, but that doesn't change the validity of what they feel. And that's the key idea that Upstream Color wants you to understand. Trauma isn't a thing that happened to you once and then is over. It stays with you, it happens again and again. You won't ever truly be rid of it, you can only hope to learn to cope. The power of this film is not in the crazy sci-fi elements or in the specifics of what happened, it's in the understanding of the damage done to its characters and the struggle they go through trying to find a way forward.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 8/22: The Red Shoes
Next week we'll be watching our second Powell & Pressburger, the splendorous The Red Shoes. The Red Shoes is available for rent on Amazon Instant Video, though it is not free for Prime members.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 8/11: Suicide Squad
On Wednesday we'll have a thread to talk about how much worse Suicide Squad is than The Dirty Dozen, but also what connections they have. Suicide Squad is still in theaters.
Many people find Upstream Color to be an entirely inscrutable film. It's easy to understand why. Shane Carruth, who plays Jeff in addition to directing, is almost pathologically uninterested in making it clear what is going on. He doesn't cheat - the pieces are there for you to put together a pretty good picture - but he shows as little as he can get away with.
But when I said Carruth is uninterested in making it clear what is going on, that's because he's not making a movie about what happens; he's making a movie about the people it happens to. He's making a movie about Kris (Amy Seimetz) and to a lesser degree Jeff as they struggle to deal with a deep trauma. We see what happens to Kris, and it's pretty terrible. She's assaulted, drugged, and coerced into giving up all she has to the man who assaults her. She hurts herself trying to get the worm out of her body, and then has it drawn out of her in a lengthy procedure. When she finally comes back to her senses, she's not certain what happened but her life is ruined; she's lost her job and is destitute.
Just think about how that must feel. You wake up one day in a highway median with strange injuries, and when you get back you find that your life is destroyed, and you're the one who destroyed it. You don't know what happened or how; it's a complete mystery and no one is sympathetic to you. It's no surprise that Kris is so thorny when she and Jeff first meet. And it's no surprise that Carruth finds this situation so much more interesting than the specifics of who, what, and why. He gives us a thief, a drug/worm, and The Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), but all that he really drives home about them is the connections that the worm creates.
Carruth shows at the beginning of the film that a drug derived from the worms creates intense connections between two people, and we see that The Sampler uses this property to create a connection between the people he takes the worms out of, and the pigs he puts them in. And this re-traumatizes both Kris and Jeff. The Sampler plays music for his pigs, and Kris & Jeff hear inexplicable sounds. Worst of all they feel every bit of the trauma, stress, and danger when The Sampler splits up their pigs and kills their piglets.
They don't understand why these things are happening, but that doesn't change the validity of what they feel. And that's the key idea that Upstream Color wants you to understand. Trauma isn't a thing that happened to you once and then is over. It stays with you, it happens again and again. You won't ever truly be rid of it, you can only hope to learn to cope. The power of this film is not in the crazy sci-fi elements or in the specifics of what happened, it's in the understanding of the damage done to its characters and the struggle they go through trying to find a way forward.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 8/22: The Red Shoes
Next week we'll be watching our second Powell & Pressburger, the splendorous The Red Shoes. The Red Shoes is available for rent on Amazon Instant Video, though it is not free for Prime members.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 8/11: Suicide Squad
On Wednesday we'll have a thread to talk about how much worse Suicide Squad is than The Dirty Dozen, but also what connections they have. Suicide Squad is still in theaters.