Indie Watch
Upstream Color
By Dan Krovich
October 31, 2013
The landscape for independent films has changed rapidly. On one hand the opportunity to build a theatrical release has become increasingly difficult, but on the other hand digital release has given indies a chance to play to a broad national audience at once. Each week, new indie releases will be profiled and because they might not be playing at a theater near you, one highly recommended film available now a click or two away via VOD (whether a new or not quite new release) will be presented for viewing without leaving your computer.
VOD Pick of the Week
Upstream Color
With just two films, director Shane Carruth has already cemented his legacy in the independent film world. His first film, Primer, is an Escher drawing of a film involving two friends who invent a time traveling machine. While the plot of Primer is difficult to tease out (I would say impossible on one viewing) with its multiple timelines and repeated doubling back, the movie is a pretty straight forward plot driven film. Upstream Color on the other hand is easier to follow from a plot perspective, but is packed densely with ideas so the challenge is less what happened and more what does it mean?
Kris (Amy Seimetz) appears to be some sort of advertising executive with a comfortable life. One night at a club, a man (credited only as “Thief”) knocks her unconscious and forces her to swallow what looks like some sort of mealworm. The worm places Kris into some sort of hypnotic trance that Thief takes advantage of, forcing her to perform repetitive tasks to buy himself time as he also gets her to empty her bank account and take out a home equity loan to hand all of her money over to him. He then abandons her.
Kris is then drawn to another character, known as The Sampler, who lures her with a low pitched sound. The Sampler extracts the worm and transfers it to a pig. Seemingly some of Kris’ psychic energy is also transferred to the pig and they become inextricably linked. The pig is released into the pen with many other pigs suggesting that she is not the only person that this has happened to. The Sampler cares for the pigs and they allow him an avenue for him to eavesdrop on the lives of the people the pigs are connected to.
Kris is left nearly broke, with no recollection of what happened, and with physical and mental scars from her experience when she meets by chance (or maybe not), Jeff, who seemingly has undergone the same experience. After initial resistance they begin a relationship based partly on shared experience, so shared in fact that they begin to intertwine their memories. Together they begin to remember and confront their reality.
Upstream Color is a movie full of ideas. The most blatant clue towards those ideas is the presence of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as a major plot point. In Walden, Thoreau espouses simplicity and self-reliance as methods to transcend materialism through introspection. Kris and Jeff’s loss of nearly everything due to their experiences forces them to lead a much simpler life, and this in turn allows them to become more aware of their interconnectedness, for better or worse. The film also allows for multiple interpretations touching on ideas of mind-body duality, relationship with a higher being, and free will. Where Primer required multiple viewings to figure out what happened, Upstream Color requires multiple viewings to pull apart the various layers. It was nine years between Primer and Upstream Color. That time was at least partially due to Carruth’s insistence on making his films on his own terms. While selfishly I would like a new Carruth film every year, if this method keeps him turning out films like Primer and Upstream Color, I can learn to be patient.
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Available at Netflix Streaming
New releases for November 1st
About Time: Looking to become the undisputed Queen of time traveling romance movies, Rachel McAdams stars in About Time from director Richard Curtis (Love, Actually). Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) discovers at the age of 21 that he can time travel, so he does what any 21 year old bloke would do if he discovered he had a great power: he uses it to get a girl (played by the aforementioned McAdams).
Dallas Buyers Club: Matthew McConaughey’s drastic weight loss to play Ron Woodroof, who battled the medical established to find black market alternative treatments when he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in the mid 1980s, has gotten the most press, but his performance is also garnering talk that it will provide him his first Oscar nomination. Costar Jared Leto is also high on the Oscar buzz lists for his supporting performance.
Diana: Naomi Watts portrays Diana, Princess of Wales in a film about the last two years of her life and her love affair with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
Mr. Nobody: In Jared Leto’s other movie opening today, he plays the 118 year old Nemo who recounts his life story. He begins at age nine when his parents divorced and he is forced to make the impossible decision of whether to go with his mother or his father. He imagines how his life would be different with one parent or the other, and as Nemo tells his “life story” he tells a tale of multiple universes where different decisions at key points in his life create separate realities. Are any of these the true reality or is there even such a thing?
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