Upstream Color (2013)
Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 113
Fresh: 96 | Rotten: 17
As technically brilliant as it is narratively abstract, Upstream Color represents experimental American cinema at its finest -- and reaffirms Shane Carruth as a talent to watch.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 4
As technically brilliant as it is narratively abstract, Upstream Color represents experimental American cinema at its finest -- and reaffirms Shane Carruth as a talent to watch.
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 7,880
Movie Info
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. (c) Official Facebook
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Cast
-
Amy Seimetz
Kris -
Shane Carruth
Jeff -
Andrew Sensenig
Sampler -
Thiago Martins
Thief -
Kathy Carruth
Orchid Mother -
Meredith Burke
Orchid Daughter -
Andreon Watson
Peter -
Ashton Miramontes
Lucas -
Myles McGee
Monty -
Frank Mosley
Husband -
Carolyn King
Wife -
Kerry McCormick
OBGYN -
Marco Rodriguez
MRI Tech -
Brina Palencia
Woman in Club -
Marsha Lynn Blackbur...
HR Manager -
John Walpole
Bank Investigator -
David Little
Veterinarian #1 -
Julie Anne Mayfield
Veterinarian #2 -
Ben Le Clair
The Sampled -
Gerald Dewey
The Sampled -
Leticia Magaña
The Sampled -
Rebecca Waldon
The Sampled -
Lindsey Roberts
The Sampled -
Cody Pottkotter
The Sampled -
Julie Santosuosso
The Sampled -
Steve Jimenez
The Sampled -
Jack Watkins
The Sampled -
Ted Ferguson
The Sampled -
Julie Ferguson
The Sampled -
Karen Jagger
The Sampled -
Jason Barnes
Roth -
Wendy Welch
Neighbor -
Keith Copeman
EMT #1 -
Nettie Yovanovitch
EMT #1 -
Tony Tamaj
Intern #1 -
Wheeler Williams
Intern #2 -
Tommy Watson
Security Guard -
Joe Cutler
Grocery Store Clerk
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Upstream Color Trailer & Photos
All Critics (114) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (96) | Rotten (17) | DVD (1)
The most visually imaginative American film since David Lynch's Eraserhead.
Top CriticA cerebral, mournful mystery that resonates like a tuning fork struck on a far-off star.
It presents us with a glimpse of the vastness of existence, of our inner nature, and of nature without that is as equally dreadful, enveloping, and terrifying as it is beautiful.
"Upstream Color" is splendid, transcendent weirdness.
I loved it.
Sci-fi might have been too familiar a word, for what may induce a kind of hallucinatory melancholy in its viewers.
More a series of obtuse moments loosely connected by the most threadbare of plots, it's unfortunately one of those films some will praise merely because they don't want to be left out in the cold.
Upstream Colour appears to have been made by a Terrence Malick fan injected with a David Cronenberg parasite.
Upstream Colour has the makings of a cult movie, though it's not a cult I feel inclined to join.
The themes may be numerous and varied - concerns about drugs, surveillance, disease, alienation - but the story does have an impeccable (albeit deeply buried) logic to it.
In the best possible way it'll get under your skin like the parasitic worms dispensed by the Thief.
Baffling, intoxicating, elegant, Shane Carruth's long-overdue follow-up to Primer is among the year's best.
At times the movie has a stunning George Saunders-level sci-fi blues . . . but really, it's NYC hipster existentialism.
Too-clever filmmaker Shane Carruth'sfascinating 2004 time-travel thriller Primer was confusing enough, but he goes a step further with this utterly impenetrable freak-out mystery.
The danger with a style that is this closed-off is that it can repel our pleasure as well as our understanding.
A confounding intellectual mystery, an enigmatic philosophical science fantasy that's like a cinematic Moebius strip.
If Upstream Color is not quite the masterpiece we were hoping for, it's a film with its own affectless mystery and chill.
Carruth's mindmelt of mesmerism, metempsychosis and micro-organisms will leave some a little cold, most bemused if not utterly baffled, and near all needing to see it a second time.
subjecting this multi-faceted film to a simple, overarching explanatory frame proves as banally disappointing as reducing humanity to mere DNA & parasitology. Better to turn off your mind, relax & float upstream...
This gorgeous, unknowable, deeply affecting film makes Primer look almost conventional, given time travel is a genre filmgoers know a little something of.
A perfectly judged, strikingly beautiful film, but also a lunatic enterprise which invites - even welcomes - befuddlement as much as wonder. A true original.
Even if you don't know what's going on, you rarely doubt that Carruth knows exactly what he's doing.
Carruth's second feature proudly follows his debut Primer (2004) in its audacity, intellect and astonishing originality. Carruth does not make films for fools, but nor does he try and fool anyone; if you're willing to look, it's all there.
It's a film that audiences will either loath or admire; I doubt it can be loved, too austere and distant, too dissonant, too incoherent in fact
The dialogue is sparse and much of the imagery and action is open to interpretation. I was intrigued, frustrated, repulsed, bewildered and ultimately bored
Audience Reviews for Upstream Color
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Thief: I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun.
Discussion Forum
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|---|---|---|
| The next big thing? | 6 months ago | 6 |
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April 3, 2013:
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Foreign Titles
- Upstream Color (UK)
"Upstream Color" is striking in many ways, most prominently in how astoundingly precise it is. There isn't a single wasted frame in the film, and every shot is composed for maximum informational density. Our introduction to Kris and the particulars of her life and the way the thief methodically strips it of all monetary value is enthralling. There is no expository dialogue explaining how the thief's chemical hypnosis process works, but understanding is reached gradually through meticulously assembled imagery. The film demands careful attention and ardently resists passive consumption, but it isn't arduous to sit through. Its photography is so hauntingly beautiful and its sound design is so involving that watching the film is a sensory experience.
Because the film has such lush nature photography and ethereal soundtrack, it occasionally evokes the work of Terrence Malick. But "Upstream Color" has none of Malick's aimlessness. It's a film explicated on very specific ideas and there is a sense of fine craftsmanship that Malick's films, especially his later ones, do not share. In many was it's closer to the cerebral and focused films of Steven Soderbergh, but that comparison also feels off, because the film is far more experiential than anything Soderbergh has made. It's not that the film doesn't have antecedents but whatever influences Carruth is drawing from are almost totally sublimated into his finished work.
Carruth has said in interviews that the editing process of "Upstream Color" only took weeks, but it plays leaner and stronger than films that have been worked over for years. There is little dialogue in the film but what there is very well rendered. The thief's hypnotic instructions to Kris have the clarity and precision of a well-rehearsed albeit very strange speech, and the sequence where Kris and Jeff slowly realize their memories are no longer as singular as they once were feels as fraught and messy as everyday conversation. That mixture of unsettling and mundane permeates the whole film and the effect is beguiling.
Like a practiced magician, Carruth carries the audience through each scenario masterfully. Many scenes in the film start off unsettlingly obscure before slowly revealing context. A man explains that his head is made of the same material as the sun. A woman is instinctively drawn to a farmer who blares his recording into the ground. A chemical within a decaying carcass bonds and turns a white orchid blue. All of these things are connected and all of these things make sense within the film's spiraling narrative though not immediately. It's that temporary gulf between presentation and understanding that separates and elevates "Upstream Color" from everything else in theaters.