MovieChat Forums > Upstream Color (2013) Discussion > Primer was brilliant but this...not so m...

Primer was brilliant but this...not so much

posted 11 years ago by DrLovehate
43 replies | jump to latest

Shane Carruth obviously has talent. He's a one man movie making juggernaut. Primer was absorbing and confounding and I really enjoyed it, so I had high hopes for his latest effort: Upstream Color.

As I watched it I understood it's about connections and loss and, towards the end, hope. Unfortunately the whole seemed less than the parts this time around. I liked individual scenes but as the credits rolled I felt that that was all I had seen. A patchwork of feelings with a nebulous plot threaded through them about the life cycle of a worm.

I'm really hoping that A Topiary gets scrapped and that Mr Carruth does something, dare I say, a little more accessible next time around. Hey, I appreciate weird cinema as much as the next guy, and I don't mind having some unanswered questions at the end of a film either. In the end though this was not a transformative experience for me. I'm afraid that Mr Carruth thought his idea was more interesting than it turned out to be once realized on film.

I applaud him for his vision and fortitude to make whatever he feels like making without having to consider market appeal and studio executive mentality. However, I think more collaboration in his future films would temper his mindset a bit and result in a better product. My two cents...

[–] Always_Curious 10 years ago

Primer was a random film I watched without being aware of all the cult type love for it.
I thought it was a totally great new take on the time travel story intermixed with nuggets of physics without it seeming overly nerdy.
I won't break it down more than that here.

My only point is after watching Primer, the last thing I'd want to do is hinder the creators future works by limiting him to a particular format or want him to keep to a certain style of film.

[–] iasimkhovich 9 years ago

i'll leave this here, partly because it's the most recent post but also because you sort of mentioned something i had a remark about. i can't watch "upstream color" BECAUSE it feels like the filmmaker's ego is REALLY slimy this time where it was intriguing and almost adorable in "primer". "primer" starts with a strong demand for attention from the viewer and that was slightly irritating because it reeked of begging to be intriguing but then it ended up being somewhat cool after a while because it felt like there was a purity in the act of all the voice over exposition. the story was rushed, somewhat weak and unimaginative because not much really happened, and i'm sure that a studio with experienced professionals would have laughed at it and if they were going to do it at all, many of the elements would have to be spaced out, enhanced or attenuated, and there was too much "too cool for the audience to understand but pay attention because it goes by fast". there was a "horror" aspect to it as well, when you consider all the homicide that had to have occurred; even though they were future/past selves.

"upstream color" is TOO reminiscent of the initial irritation of "primer" the way it starts with a very manipulative and slimy guy telling his captive female what to do. i've tried twice now and the ego trip i feel i'm stuck in makes me wince. i'm a very seasoned film viewer, watching near 1000 films some years, most of them new to me, and my collection is probably over 5000 rips. one summer it was like 4-6 movies a day from various streaming sites and i keep all the rips. i'm willing to try again but it's not MY opinion that this movie probably sucks, it's comparing to how thousands of other filmmakers try to tell a story.

[–] knoxfan2008 9 years ago

Really well put OP. I found Primer to be a brilliant film, and I respect that Carruth won't blindly pander to his viewers as some directors have in their latest films (Nolan, O'Russell). But this film was so underwhelming and disappointing. I adored the first 30 minutes, but then it became too absorbed in it's sound design and just had endless repetition that made the story dull.

In primer, the first time I saw it, I had no idea what was going on, but the film-making was so good, and the acting was so well done, that I was still intrigued and WANTED to understand the film and watch it again. I had pretty much none of that emotional connection with this film. It was less complicated than primer, but it also had less interesting characters, the sound design was pretty obnoxious and the shots, like I said became stale and repetitive, especially the Malick/Ridley Scott hand-waving shots.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] knoxfan2008 9 years ago

No, he's made 1 great film and one good film. Films that are provocative and challenging, where every frame and word has meaning, but they also have layers and it isn't artsy for the sake of being artsy.

Nolan has given up trying to make provocative films, TDKR and Interstellar were dumbed-down, pandering, self-indulgent messes. Nolan can't write a good screenplay, he bashes the themes over the viewers heads so hard that it's lost only on the densest audience members, and luckily for Nolan, that happens to be the majority of his fanbase. He's a great director. But compare the Brilliant 'Primer' script to the screenplay of any of Nolan's films (Memento the exception) and there is zero competition, Primer has subtlety, realistic characters and dialogue full of technical jargon that isn't dumbed down so a 1st grader can understand it. Which is more than I can say for Nolan atm.

Also, O'Russell for his last 3 films has just been trying to win an Oscar with Oscar Bait films. 'The Fighter' was a rehash of the same underdog story we've seen literally hundreds of times before. 'SLP' was a film that marketed itself as being deep and insightful, but just turned out to be a conventional, safe rom-com where the characters have mental illnesses that make them 'Quirky' rather than legitimately affected by their impairment.
And 'American Hustle' was just his attempt to rip off Scorsese, but he forgot the good cinematography and fast editing and smart humour. A.H solely relied on good actors hamming it up and 70's music.

Carruth is a fu*cking hack

So the guy who is making intelligent, challenging arthouse films with no money, who could have sold out, but is instead making films with purpose is a hack? Yet O'russell and Nolan, Directors who make junk food solely designed to allow idiots like yourself to pat themselves on the back, who pander to the lowest common denominator, who make films designed to make the most money possible from the broadest audience are not hacks?

WELL DONE YOU DOPE!

But looking at your retarded ratings where you give literally everything a 1 or a 10, just shows me how dumb you are and how little you know about cinema. It was no surprise to me you gave Looper 10/10 and Insidious 3 10/10 and Kingsman 10/10. It seems to me you don't like to be challenged in any way and just gobble up the same old hollywood garbage they feed you. YOU are what's wrong with film Criticism!

[–] johnslegers 8 years ago

I don't get the appeal of Shane Carruth's movies, really. IMO, Primer was a confusing, disjointed mess that was difficult to sit through... and Upstream Color was even more painful.

I guess this movie is praised by some because it's "different"... but even that's something that's debatable, really. I'd call him a poor Lynch rip-off at best. Lynch has been making movies like this for decades. Unlike Carruth, Lynch was truly "different" from anything else that had been made before. Not only that, but Lynch's movies are actually watchable...

[–] MoviemanCin 8 years ago

I agree Dr Love.

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.

[–] IMDB_Vits 8 years ago

PRIMER: 1/10
UPSTREAM COLOR: 3/10