Upstream Color

Uncategorized, Winter 2015

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By Warren Singh

Shane Carruth and Amy Seimetz in Upstream Color / Shane Carruth

Shane Carruth and Amy Seimetz in Upstream Color / Shane Carruth

 

It’s complicated.

I think.

Maybe the most incomprehensible thing about Shane Carruth’s film Upstream Color is that it is, in fact, comprehensible.

Perhaps.

My previous experience with Carruth was with his 2004 film, Primer, which was a polished gem of a time travel movie that refused to dumb anything down for the sake of comprehensibility.

Upstream Color opens with Kris, a woman played by Amy Seimetz, who is drugged with a substance from a forcibly ingested roundworm that induces extreme psychological malleability. The assailant then essentially hypnotizes her into emptying her bank accounts and makes off with all of her assets. But this isn’t really about Thief (no really, in the credits he’s simply Thief). The theft really only sets the stage for the rest of the film.

A year later, Kris meets Jeff, played by writer/director Carruth, and they fall in love. But the movie isn’t all about boy-meets-girl, secrets revealed, happily ever after, either. That’s certainly a large element in the movie, but also significant is the role of the parasite itself. It’s never fully explained, but we do know that the life cycle consists of the following: a man known as Keeper (actually credited as Sampler) extracts the roundworm from the victim, and then transplants it into one of the pigs he keeps on a pig farm. Any offspring from the pigs are placed in a burlap sack and thrown into a nearby river. The decomposing bodies then release an unnamed compound that is absorbed by a white flower downstream, which then turns blue. The flowers are collected and sold – and it is the blue color that indicates that the drug-secreting worms are present in the potting soil (this is where Thief gets the worms that he uses on the victims).

Still with me? From pig to plant to human to pig: this is the lifecycle of the parasite, and it’s this cycle that unites all of the characters.

So is the movie about unification? Not quite. Sampler is able see out of the eyes of victims through a connection they have with the pigs whose parasites they ingested, and we see their lives after the fact (they are dramatically different, as job loss and financial ruin frequently follow from Thief’s actions).

It’s about connection, then? Closer. One critical view has been that it’s about identity: how it forms, fractures, and then is rebuilt.

To me, the movie is about trauma. Thief at the beginning of the movie victimizes both Kris and Jeff, even though we see only Kris’ experience. After a time skip, we see the two meet and get to know each other.  The effects of the trauma are evident on Kris: when the two get coffee, she pulls out her pills and places the bottles on the table, flatly stating, “this is to save us time.” We’re left to conjecture that she’s on the medication due to the financial, emotional, and professional impact of the drug. She now works an entry-level job at a printing and signage shop, a huge step down from the corporate position she held before.

Jeff isn’t fazed, however, and continues to pursue her. Jeff has also suffered similarly, becoming a pariah in his workplace. And so the outcast and the damsel in depression become a team.

These events are also reflected in the lives of their pigs: the two pigs that correspond to Jeff and Kris are found by Sampler to have paired off at the farm, and eventually have a litter of piglets.

When Sampler drowns this litter, Kris runs out of her workplace on the verge of tears, punching through a window as she leaves. Jeff becomes angry, drops a box of papers, and sprints for the exit, bowling over two coworkers on the way.

They find their way to each other, and make their way home. Running inside, buffeted by emotional forces that neither can explain, they crawl into the bathtub, where, surrounded by emergency supplies, in a room lit by flashlight, they hold each other and wait for the storm to pass.

Upstream Color follows the characters after they suffer at the hands of Thief and become part of the life cycle of the parasite, and the movie then shows the aftermath: the tenuous regaining of equilibrium, the aftershocks, the slow recovery, and finally, the taking back of control at the end of the film through the only real plot ‘twist’ (it’s more of a shake-up) in the movie. The importance of the reclamation of agency is explicitly stated (or as close to explicit as the movie ever gets) when Kris warns Jeff before going out with him, “It’s not my fault when things go wrong.” Jeff tellingly replies, “Yes it is.”

As a sensory experience, Upstream Color is distinct from most mainstream movies, although perhaps that owes more to its belonging to the ‘independent’ category (it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013) with a color palette that makes for a slow moving, evocative journey that is complemented by the ambient soundtrack. Carruth himself composed the music for the film, and it’s perhaps due to his involvement in every major aspect of the movie that it feels so deliberate: it’s not a frou-frou flapping about, but a constructed, defined piece of cinema with a purpose.

Sometimes with Carruth (OK, most times) that purpose is hard to grasp. Carruth isn’t one to spoon-feed the viewer, and this is a demanding film.

Upstream Color is absolutely worth watching. It’s a complex film that defies quick explanation, rife with alternative approaches to direction, narrative, writing, and sound. It’s a film that many of my acquaintances (and yours too, I suspect) would dismiss as too art-house. It’s definitely a film that is on the outer side of the artistic envelope. It’s also a film that I’m still mulling over close to a year after watching it for the first time.

            So go do me a favor and watch Upstream Color. And after you’ve finished, come find me and tell me what you thought the movie was about (no seriously; I’ll buy you a cup of coffee). Because I think it’s complicated.

 

Upstream Color can be bought and downloaded here.

 

 

Warren Singh is a bookworm and wiseacre who sometimes goes undercover as a writer. He also occasionally pretends to be studying chemical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. Sinecures, paeans, and disproportionately massive bribes may be proffered at probablystillsomewhatincorrect.wordpress.com

 

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Bikers, Birds, and Blue Velvet: The American Bad Dream

Uncategorized, Winter 2015

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by Sasha Kohan

Well, I did it: I finally forced myself to watch some of the “classics” I’ve somehow missed on my inadvertent journey to becoming a Screen Studies major. By compiling a list of every movie I am ashamed to have never seen and forcing my friends to initial the ones they wouldn’t mind watching twice, I figured I had set myself up for success, achievement, culture, education. I chose Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper), The Birds (1963, Alfred Hitchcock), and Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch).

 hitchcock with avian friend during the making of “The birds,” 1963

And now, here I am, trying to consider exactly what I’ve seen.

I’ve seen a lot of things.

I’ve seen a man with bloodstained holes where his eyes used to be, another gruesomely stabbed to death in a sleeping blanket, and a group of gangsters moved to tears by a lip-synched rendition of “In Dreams.” More unsettling, I’ve seen Dennis Hopper as both one half of a freedom-chasing, drug-using motorcycle duo and as a sadomasochistic sociopath who gets off wearing a gas mask. Perhaps even more unsettling still, I’ve seen a vulnerable Jack Nicholson (vulnerable? Jack Nicholson?) succumb to the peer pressure of two freewheeling hippies and anxiously take a hit of his first joint.

 

Needless to say, these movies have left me with a lot on my mind, while 20 years of life and education have left me with an infuriatingly insufficient ability to articulate it all. I’ve nearly finished the course requirements that fulfill my Screen Studies major thus far, and as a result I can critically examine the meaning of certain camera angles, costume decisions, light temperature, and transitions, among other details. I could point out the total absence of non-diegetic music in the soundtrack of The Birds, how horribly the silences enhance the anticipation of impending crowing sounds, how starkly it contrasts with the feel-good road trip playlist of Easy Rider and the recurring nominal theme of Blue Velvet. I could analyze Hopper’s jarring quick cuts back and forth from present to future, scene to scene, and explain how such an unconventional technique underlines how strange the easygoing motorcycle life seemed to the square society surrounding Billy and the aptly and unsubtly named Captain America. And I could talk about how Blue Velvet – well, I wouldn’t even know where to start.

But this is the trouble when movie lovers become film students. Once you are trained in the art of noticing technicalities, the ability to simply sit back and watch a movie slowly but surely evolves into a constant process of interpretation and evaluation, until you suddenly find yourself reading an impossible amount into every romantic comedy and action movie you see with your family, and they all get sick of you asking what they thought because “I liked it” is no longer good enough. Frankly, and from a film student’s unrelenting eye, the movies I watched are so rich with deliberate mysteries, I feel I could write a thesis for each one in an attempt to solve it all – but there is a thin thread tying together my discombobulated train of thoughts. Hanging over my mental rubble is a hazy but discernible smog, an overwhelming and conflicted sense of America.

 Dennis hopper charms kyle maclachlan 

 Dennis hopper charms kyle maclachlan 

But what else is new, really? On-screen, off-screen – the Americas are the same.

 

Though these films are aesthetically dated in ways that could never be recreated now without accusations of insincerity or that unconvincing, too-smooth Hollywood glow, I was surprised (I don’t know why) to realize that, in theory, America is just as terrifying as it always has been. Whether I imagined the past or the present as more of a golden age I couldn’t say; I have just always been under the impression that something fundamental had changed between “now” and “then,” but now, I’m not so sure. A while back, I recall posting a rare politically-charged status on Facebook regarding the Supreme Court decision which allows corporations to refuse contraception health coverage, openly wondering how we’ve allowed things to get so unreasonably out of control. (I try to keep these comments few and far between – sooner or later, everyone starts to hate that one person who posts too much of a too-strong opinion). Through my passionately confused, concerned fit of outrage, dulled only by the silent, padded walls of the Internet, I was suddenly reminded of Easy Rider’s tagline: “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” Then an image of Blue Velvet struck me, vaguely – white picket fence, green grass, red roses, and all the filth that lives beneath.

dennis hopper and peter fonda in “easy rider”

America. Looking. Can’t find. Anywhere.

 

It was all so big, I wasn’t sure if the links were truly there or if I had imagined them in a desperate attempt to create some meaning in my stupid life – and then – Godzilla! The Birds! Apocalypse! America! It was there, all there! It was all one horrible, beautiful web of fiction and lies, of myth and reality, of now and then, of me and of them.

What really unites The Birds, Blue Velvet, and Easy Rider, is the responsibility of the individual, and the deeply significant absence of love. Whether or not this is indicative of some universal lack of love for the American Dream is relevant in some ways, but irrelevant in others. Human relationships, whether between Tippi Hedren and her handsome pet store customer, Blue Velvet‘s young hero and his high school lover, or Billy and Captain America, are irrelevant to these stories. While flirtation, sex, and friendship do exist and move the plot, the utter emptiness of these relationships mainly highlight the utter emptiness of these characters and the world they live in – that is to say, America. Things have changed – the specifics, yes (the distinctly eighties hair, the sixties cinematography, the political context, the popular culture) – but what struck a nerve in me was realizing how true these movies still are, and how alone we and you and I often feel in the universal longing to do or make something worthwhile, in this world or in ourselves, asking, is this the way to live?

Perhaps, as it so often happens, I’m reading too much into things. Perhaps I’m a twenty-something cynic, doomed to a life of reading Dostoevsky with troubled, furrowed brows. Or perhaps I ought to buy a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies, walk off, and look for something better than the America found here.

 

Sasha  Kohan is a student at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., pursuing a degree in English and Screen Studies.

 

 

Photo Credits:

Alfred Hitchcock. [Photography]. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Retrieved 14 Jan 2015, from 
http://quest.eb.com/#/search/158_2481394/1/158_2481394/cite

BLUE VELVET (1986) – HOPPER, DENNIS; MacLACHLAN, KYLE. [Photography]. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Retrieved 14 Jan 2015, from 
http://quest.eb.com/#/search/144_1534583/1/144_1534583/cite

EASY RIDER (1969) – HOPPER, DENNIS; FONDA, PETER. [Photography]. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Retrieved 14 Jan 2015, from 
http://quest.eb.com/#/search/144_1555235/1/144_1555235/cite

 

 

Bollywood: A Primer for the Confused and the Curious

Fall 2014, Uncategorized

by Bansari Kamdar

  Alam-Ara (1931), the first Bollywood talkie

  Alam-Ara (1931), the first Bollywood talkie

   We Indians love our clichéd three-hour long movies featuring big Bollywood stars, catchy dance numbers, and memorable melodies, movies often set in exotic locations that are pretty but entirely irrelevant to the story, lots of romance and action, and–last but by means the least – a happy ending.

 

For the average Indian, Bollywood movies offer a perfect escape from the daily grind. How beloved are these movies, you ask? One of them, Diwali Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, has been running continuously in some Indian theaters since its release in 1995, and is still going strong. The title, by the way, translates in English to The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride, which alone tells you all you need to know about the plot.

 

For the outsider, this is all very puzzling. Bollywood produces about 1,000 movies a year, which is twice as many as Hollywood, but the genre is still largely unknown by the average western movie-goer. So I’ve put together a few of the more common questions I’ve been asked by my American friends about Bollywood movies.

 

Why are Bollywood movies so lo-o-o-ng?

 A test match in the beloved sport of cricket in India can last five days, and Indians will carefully follow every ball. An Indian wedding lasts three days. So a three-hour movie isn’t that big a deal for us.

 

Why are there so many songs?

 Bollywood movies are indeed rich in musical numbers, and, while many present-day movies are slowly moving away from this trend, it was not very long ago that 10 musical numbers in a movie was the norm. The numerous songs are a part of the escapism theme that Bollywood has always openly embraced. We’re not talking realism here. Bollywood uses musical sequences as a tool to depict the characters’ emotions and as a backdrop for the action.

 

There are plenty of movies coming out of Hollywood. Why watch Bollywood movies?

 Why order Chinese takeout? Why eat falafel? They both have something new and different to offer. The same with Bollywood; it has its own flavor, and, for someone who loves exploring, it can be a unique and precious treasure.

 

Why so many clichéd plots?

 It’s true that Bollywood produces many commercial “masala” movies (masala is a seasoning made of many kinds of spices, and, likewise, these movies often blend many different popular genres—musical, comedy, action, etc.)  These films are often melodramas topped with action heroes, damsels in distress, and one-dimensional villains, and are commonly served with a healthy serving of sweet happy endings. But there are many other forms of Indian movies. Art cinema and experimental cinema has been ever-present since the conception of Indian cinema. Today, we are seeing the return of social activism in films, a movement that was particularly strong in the 1950’s and 1960’s (known as Bollywood’s Golden Era), and young directors today are trying to capture what it means to grow up Indian in this ever-shrinking world. With changing times, Bollywood is also changing and reinventing itself.


           

 

Descent of a Species: The Evolution of Godzilla

Fall 2014, Uncategorized

by Sasha Kohan

Earlier this summer, Gareth Edwards’ take on the classic Godzilla broke records for the best opening weekend of any disaster movie and creature feature, raking in $93.2 million in the United States alone. One wonders, however, how many of those millions of American viewers were aware that this film would not exist were it not for a critical moment in our nation’s history.

It was, of course, the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 that served as the inspiration for the saurian creature that has become the mascot of Japanese pop culture and the inspiration for multitudinous movies, books, comics, television shows, and video games. With songs dedicated to him and statues built in his honor, Godzilla has even won an MTV Lifetime Achievement Award, one of only three fictional characters to do so.  

In the sixty years since Godzilla’s conception, however, the meaning behind his story seems to have changed. Japan’s original 1954 Gojira is not what we see in Edwards’ most recent adaptation (although this may not be entirely bad – the CGI creature we see now has come a long way from the delightful campiness of the original monster-suit). How has Godzilla changed with time, and will he ever become irrelevant?

The allegorical journey of Godzilla began in spring 1954, when Tomoyuki Tanaka, producer for Toho Motion Picture Company, was challenged to make Japan’s first major monster movie and decided to work the film as a metaphor for the atomic bomb.

Japan is the only nation ever to have suffered a nuclear attack. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly upon Little Boy’s detonation over Hiroshima in 1945, with some bodies vanishing completely from the heat of the explosion and thousands of others dying from long-term effects of radiation exposure. The death toll would eventually reach 135,000. Three days later, more than 40,000 were killed instantly in Nagasaki, with total casualties reaching upwards of 50,000. It is not difficult to understand why so much of Japanese culture has revolved around the nuclear theme.

The idea for Godzilla, however, was not inspired by these incidents alone. The opening scene of Ishiro Honda’s original Gojira, in which a fishing boat is suddenly struck by a beam of bright light, is based on the March 1954 incident when the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon 5 was exposed to severe radiation and nuclear fallout from the United States’ Castle Bravo device test on the Bikini Atoll. The explosion was more than twice as powerful as the bomb designers had expected and more than one thousand times as powerful as Little Boy. “Godzilla dramatizes nuclear horror unlike any other film of its period,” says film critic Steve Biodrowski, “because the fantasy element is clearly standing in for a reality too horrible to contemplate directly.” For audiences in America and around the world, Godzilla is and has always been a fantasy, an amusement, an entertainment; for the Japanese audiences of 1954, the film struck close to home.

In the 1956 American version of the film, significant alterations were made to Honda’s original. Along with the insertion of additional footage of actor Raymond Burr as an American reporter, these alterations included the cutting of several scenes that alluded to Godzilla’s connection with the bomb. Among the omitted sequences are references to the bomb being a threat to Japan and a realistic political debate over whether the public has the right to  know the truth about Godzilla, or whether they should be protected from it. The most significant reference cut from the 1956 version, however, is much smaller and more poignant, occurring when two strangers aboard a train are making small talk about the latest Godzilla news. One woman laments the headlines and the idea of confronting another tragedy. “Not after I survived Nagasaki,” she says. Another man joins in with a reference to the firebombing of Tokyo, saying, “We have to evacuate again?” Even in this fictitious universe, Godzilla is not a just an allegorical stand-in for the bomb; he is a supplement to its reality. American film editors in 1956, however, were not comfortable in this universe. Moments of truth were omitted, and Godzilla’s American legacy grew as mere fantasy.

In the half-century following the creation of Godzilla, the Toho company produced 27 sequels to Honda’s original, and a sense of patriotism eventually became associated with the giant monster. “Godzilla,” writes professor of Japanese literature Susan J. Napier, “began as the ultimate alien who, as the series continued, became a friend to Japan, an insider, ‘one of us.’” While the 1954 original depicted a Japan in panic, Godzilla showed a traumatized audience just how much they had managed to overcome. The film’s view of science, nature, and humanity remained grim and pessimistic, but the creature became a mascot for a nation devastated by war and the following period of uplift and hopes for peace. According to Napier, “The series’ reassuring subtext remains the same throughout: even if famous monuments such as Tokyo Tower or the new Tokyo City Hall get trampled on, they can always be rebuilt.”

Considering the enormous significance of Godzilla in Japanese popular culture, Gareth Edwards’ recent hit remake is all the more curious and, perhaps, problematic. Even the notion of America adapting a film and legacy which was only created because of the thousands of lives lost and despair caused by Americans is uncomfortable, to say the least. Although Japan-U.S. relations are currently stable and civil, it seems somewhat problematic for the superpower that crushed another nation to ask to borrow a most beloved icon for our own enjoyment. However, Roland Emmerich had crossed this line already with his widely criticized 1998 version, hated among critics and Godzilla fans alike, and even rebranded and essentially disowned as “Zilla” by its parent-company, Toho. In licensing the film to Legendary Pictures, Toho set certain conditions under which the film was to be made, including that Godzilla was created from a nuclear incident, and that the film be set in Japan. While these conditions were basically met, it is certainly questionable whether Toho’s expectations were. Although Godzilla’s radioactive past is often referenced in the movie, it can hardly be said that this Godzilla really has anything to do with nuclear anxiety. While the basic structure of any Godzilla film is there, it is so loose and ambiguous that it simply becomes another monster movie: huge, uncontrollable creatures suddenly wreak havoc on densely populated city and destroy cultural (American) landmarks while cookie-cutter human melodrama happens in between battle scenes. Throw in some radiation, don’t forget to mention Japan, and BOOM – Godzilla movie, done.

Prior to its release, writer Frank Darabont was asked whether the new version would uphold the original nuclear allegory or “represent a different kind of metaphor, something we’re dealing with as a culture,” only for Darabont to respond saying that, in film, there is always “a margin of interpretation.” While this is already clear to the majority of movie-watchers, Edwards’ Godzilla seems to have rather a large margin.

In a somewhat contrived effort to remind audiences that they are well aware of Godzilla’s background, the 2014 filmmakers mention the events that started it all in a quick somber scene with the lone Japanese character of Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe). Dr. Serizawa shares with a confidant (and the audience) a remnant of his traumatic past: a watch that survived Hiroshima and belonged to his father. Unfortunately, the scene is so quick and out of the blue that it feels more like a forced moment of silence before the big games starts than a sincere acknowledgment of the past.

In fact, Watanabe’s entire character appears to have been created to preserve some remnant of the true spirit of Godzilla and the culture in which he was created. By simply being Japanese, mentioning Hiroshima, and uttering the tag line, “The arrogance of man is in thinking nature is in his control, and not the other way around,” Watanabe’s role is essentially objectified and confined. The tag line is misleading, however, or at least ambiguous, in that it may delude viewers into thinking it refers to the more topical, less edgy issue of global climate change.

What stands out most in Edwards’ Godzilla, however, is the distinct Americanness in which the original Japanese story has been soaked. The only scenes set in Godzilla’s homeland occur in the first half of the film, most of which, rather ironically, take place at a nuclear plant (not to mention the opening recreation of the very same hydrogen bomb test which led to the Lucky Dragon incident, perhaps included for fans of the 1954 original. This change of emphasis also begs the question of how appropriate it would be for even Japan to produce a Godzilla remake at this time.  Beginning in the early 1970s, nuclear energy has been a national strategic priority of Japan and has come to provide a significant amount of the nation’s electricity. However, following the devastating tsunami in 2011, which killed nearly 20,000 people and triggered the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese public opinion on nuclear energy has largely reverted back to what it was following Godzilla’s original release, with polls finding up to 80 percent of the Japanese population were in favor of discontinuing the use of all fifty-four of the country’s nuclear reactors.

With this in mind, it seems as though the remake of a significantly anti-nuclear-powered allegory like Godzilla might have been met with slight confusion and discomfort – no more, however, than the U.S. version we were given leaves us with. Not only does the remake cloud Godzilla’s enormous significance in a potentially offensive “Americanness,” but it also does so in a way that so strangely seems to criticize itself that one could easily read the film as ultimately un-American. The main theme of this version, as embodied by Bryan Cranston’s character and his mission, is government distrust.

It is difficult to come away from this film without questioning the politics behind it. Ideas of democracy, unity, and peace are tainted by doubt and distrust. As we watch this American version of the Godzilla story, we are only reminded of our nation’s shortcomings, historic moments of horror and regret. While at times the film seems to be an attempt to charge American audiences with pride in their nation (not unsubtly done with the recurring image of Godzilla destroying Chinatown – representative of another world superpower with which we seem to consistently compete), the movie actually instills a sense of guilt and shame for our past. The 1954 original’s sense of patriotism and reassurance is twisted by sixty years of history, and viewers walk away from the remake wondering what else we don’t know. The message is emphasized more than anything by the inclusion of an old Elvis song – and what could be more American? As “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise” plays in merry irony over the destruction of Las Vegas, suspicions that we should start being more suspicious arise, solidified by the ominous still-water ending.

While little else is clear, Godzilla viewers everywhere can at least be certain that the legacy and evolution of Japan’s beloved monster is far from complete.