Happy 85th Birthday Stanley Kubrick

In homage, here is my list of favorite Stanley Kubrick films:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Shining
3. Eyes Wide Shut
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Barry Lyndon
6. Full Metal Jacket
7. Dr. Strangelove
8. The Killing
9. Paths of Glory
10. Spartacus
Honorable mention: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Upstream Color and Terrence Malick communication

This critique did not do well on my wordpress, so I decided to post it here. It's also good to celebrate Shane Carruth's success with his newest film being released on Netflix.

“You’re always battling two armies: hunger and fatigue.”

One has to ponder what if Shane Carruth’s film was made at a different time, when gritty parasite from human to pig imagery could not be shown. The theme of the film is country versus city, man versus nature. The barn the pig is raised in versus the large urban skyscrapers and hotels our main characters progress in. The film sort of reminded me of Au Hasard Balthazar how it followed the maggot and its subjects.

As noted by one of the people who I sat with during the film, the theme of the film was emergence theory and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was a key mention and inspiration for this film. How do we survive such an insane world where we are unable to communicate, especially with so much technology and lack of social communication nowadays? The paper thing chain imagery is also important. Shane Carruth and Kris have like many other creatures in the film a paper thing connection in this world. She compared herself to ‘lings being drawn to something. Another example demonstrated in the film was how the couple shared Shane Carruth’s fat kid story before the story got changed by the female protagonist. The humans, the worm and the pig are different, but natural. When she goes underwater, she does it naturally because her fellow living creature, the pig was put underwater as well. How that kind of powerful natural phenomenal mentality can test ones sanity through media. When the sewing machine is cut, so is the music. Another connection like the paper chain?

One may note that I may have misinterpreted the film as I really did not get it till the middle portion. After the film disguises what the film is about in the first third, it is revealed to be about a woman who has a mental illness after suffering in multiple ways as noted in the film’s plot I will not spoil. (She reveals it publicly in a restaurant, which Shane Carruth attempts to hide.) The second third it starts to make sense. She loses her job at a bank because of her lack of sanity in the first part possibly from the abduction-parasite implantation..

There is very little dialogue so whenever it appears brace for it. After the female pig becomes protective, She had removed organs, possibly from the worm. She has small hair for the rest of the film after she goes underwater, after the pig who now has the maggot has drowned. There is broker technobabble throughout the film, discussing selling 36,000 from a partially owned house.There are extreme no-make up close ups in many shots.

SPOILERs that I question about the film: We never find out who Shane Carruth divorced. Did the sound man and Shane Carruth wear the same headphones? Why did Kris leave? Why did Jeff choose her, even though he knew she would be full of problems? Love?

Why was the water dye at first much darker than the oxygen dye? There were flowers that appeared from that water. In any case, that was probably how the movie was titled Upstream Color, because of the water’s hue after the pig drowning incident. Also, to note of in the banner are the words. The story may refer to nature and the color may refer to flowers blooming upstream from the dirt formed from fertilized soil from death.

The film has been compared with the Tree of Life only featuring fractions of dialogue, great cinematography and the theme of a connection with nature. Thank you, Shane Carruth. Thank you!

Shane Carruth’s premier film Primer and Upstream Color are currently on Netflix.

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