Review of Upstream Color (2013) by Dana F — 02 Nov 2014

It's certainly a beautiful film, and a VERY intriguing concept. However, the narrative is extremely difficult to follow. It chooses to tell the story with images instead of dialogue, which is cool if the images made it clear what was happening.

As it is, the images are ambiguous, and the film skips around to different images at different times, seemingly for no reason. As a result, for most the movie, I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

Thank god for plot summaries, luckily I was able to read what was happening as I watched, which increased my enjoyment of the film immensely. It really is a great story and a fascinating movie, it's just a little to heady and artsy-fartsy for my taste.

But you can't deny it's visceral power or spot-on tone, as well as the direction and editing choices. It's clear that this was a labor of love for writer/director/everybody Shane Carrouth.