'Upstream Color' Review (Translating a New Film Language)

I don’t talk about what the film is about in this review because I don’t think the story/plot is worth putting in limelight here. So here is the trailer.

A good movie review is a translation of said movie. Though every once in a while a filmmaker ignores the language to create something different in order to express themselves. A quote from Tarkovsky’s ‘The Mirror’ feels apt. “Words can’t express everything a person feels. Words are flaccid”. Shane Carruth is the next in a line of filmmakers who understand that words are inherently empty when it comes to emotion so he leaves them behind.

Words will be lost in translation but sound is universal. No matter the language characters are using the sounds that encompass them (both diegetic and non-diegetic) is never translated for your benefit at the bottom of the screen. A piece of music evokes the same emotion in most societies regardless of where they come from. Mozart means the same thing to a Stalinist to as it does to wall street broker. So by building upon this Carruth designs a tapestry of sound that brings us closer to the characters then what visuals alone can do. Upstream Color is composed of many montage sequences and to successfully unite them individually and as a whole, a wide variety of techniques are used. The most obvious sound cuts are J, L and match cuts (which are used for association) but it’s how the film builds upon these cuts throughout. In a way, it’s like a running gag in a comedy, after a while it becomes repetitive and predictable. So you mix it up by changing it and new ways of telling the joke. Carruth and his sound team simply keep pushing the boundaries with their use of sound as a story telling element.

The score seems to be the creation of one of the characters in the film who goes around recording sounds on his property. A link between characters is finding a CD of ambient music created by the man recording the sounds. When we bare witness to him recording and creating his music it walks the line between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. There is a purposeful connection between the sounds we’re hearing and the emotional. There is no need for words in these moments as the sound tells us all we need to know.

Because there is so little dialogue throughout the film, the scenes that are more formal in their approach in which actors don’t talk require them to be more expressive and reactive to their surroundings and circumstances. Like pictures and sound, a look on a person quickly defines what they feel without words bogging them down. This obviously allows a director to tell the plot without the need for dialogue. Though the more intriguing aspect is that it allows the audience to find the right word for themselves in a moment. A character could look sad but perhaps you feel that depressed or forlorn is a better word. You aren’t told how to connect but you are given the opportunity. Having a character simply exclaim “I can’t take this anymore” bogs it down. Words have clumsily tried to define a state of mind.

Of course, the sound is only one half of cinema. The sounds used throughout are flaccid through context until they are united with the images. While the sound is distinct it has a greater impact on the audience once they are brought together through editing. I find the word rhythm quite often lacking for when it’s used to described editing. It always gives the impression that editing is 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2… and so on. Upstream Color is an example of where I feel like a word is rendered useless when describing something. Rather the editing here glides or flows. A few moments are covered with about 10 shots in as many seconds but it feels like one continuous shot despite the shots used are of different sizes and angles. When we’re asked to associate sounds we need to understand what is making the sound too. Sound doesn’t come out of thin air after all.

I will admit the last two-thirds of the film break away from the first plot-wise and I don’t know how I feel about the change in the story. Also, despite only being 90 minutes long Upstream Color will test your patience but I ask you to be patient and pay attention.

Upstream Color is one of the few movies that attempts to continue the tradition of redefining the language of cinema, the same way that Birth of Nation, Citizen Kane or Breathless did. It’s even more refreshing to see a film such as this today as the language is becoming more concrete with conventions becoming harder to break. In the end, this is a translation of a dialect I am not familiar with so take it with a grain of salt. If that means anything to you.

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What are your thoughts on Upstream Color?

Also, the best sound designed films of the decade are mother!, Beyond the Hills, You Were Never Really Here and Upstream Color.