"“Very pretentious. If only there were a stronger word...”"

“A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.”

This, believe it or not, was not an excerpt from an old Dawson’s Creek script, but the widely used synopsis for Upstream Colour, the second feature from Primer director Shane Carruth. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and indeed winner of a Special Jury Prize for Sound Design, the film clearly made an impression, although after viewing the film, it isn’t exactly clear why.

In terms easier to understand than the excruciating aforementioned synopsis, a man drugs and brainwashes a women (Amy Seimetz) in order to steal all of her money. She is then ‘released’ back in society and is understandably confused by what has happened. She then meets a man (Carruth) and they have a special connection, as the viewer is left to untangle the rest of the film. Not as easy as it sounds. What follows is nothing more than a self-absorbed, inaccessible series of scenes, mainly involving two characters that are impossible to care about because they don’t actually have personalities.

The film is supposed to be about people interacting with each each other on a level that is deeper than the levels of communication that the average human can comprehend, but given that it’s going to be humans watching the film, to strip away any recognisable form of interaction, such as saying full sentences, or conveying emotions, seems a little pretentious. Well, very pretentious. If only there were a stronger word.??Credit where credit’s due, Carruth can’t be accused of compromise. He was involved in virtually every aspect of the filmmaking process, and it’s hard to imagine that the end result was anything other than what he wanted, although you can’t help but wonder if a more collaborative effort may have achieved a more engaging film.

The original idea is also very interesting, but it’s a bit like when someone is trying to describe a terrifying dream that they’d had the night before. They know they were terrified because they can understand their own imagination, however disjointed and surreal it may be, and they explain to the listener in the best possible way that they can, but really the person listening is uninterested because it doesn’t really make sense when translated to a person that isn’t part of that reality. The film is a sci-fi so of course there’s going to be a different reality that exists within the film, but as with any sci-fi, there still has to be an element of humanity in the film or the interest is lost, and that is sadly what has happened in Upstream Colour.

The film is also beautifully shot but, like make-up, it only serves to conceal the flaws, and very quickly the beauty serves only as a distraction. Maybe the key is to try a little harder to search for the meaning, but in order to do that there has to be some intrigue, some mystery that is dying to be solved, but instead all your left wondering is why on earth you’d put in the effort.