Upstream Color

Upstream Color starts as a mystery, quickly veering into horror territory. As it continues it becomes a sci-fi film, then a romance and partly a thriller, never settling on one genre, and concluding as sort of a detective story. Upstream Color is one of the most wildly imaginative movies I've seen. 

The most effective and disturbing aspect is the horror/ sci-fi segment, vaguely reminiscent of Martha Marcy May Marlene, a powerful, though unfortunately titled, movie about a girl haunted by her past in an abusive cult. Kris (Amy Seimetz), a young independent woman, is abducted, we don't know by whom, and subjected to physical and psychological terrors that are hinted at by some striking visuals, but that never become too explicit. Mind controlling worms are implanted in her. She is then made to memorize large passages of the novel "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau. After "the thief," as the credits call the kidnapper, makes sure she is completely subordinate to him, he makes her sign away all of her money and leaves her, broken. He isn't seen again. 

At one point, Kris undergoes involuntary surgery to remove the worms. She has the operation next to a piglet that is also being operated on because of worms. Somehow, they become linked for the rest of the film. There is an overabundance of light filling every frame as well as numerous jarring jump cuts, making Kris's experiences seem like a dream. Are they? I can't say, but she's not the only one who goes through such nightmarish episodes. 

Occasionally, Shane Carruth, the director/cinematographer/editor/star of the film (yes, he really did all of those jobs) will cut to a farm full of piglets. Each piglet seems to share a link with a human. As an unnamed farmer passes by each unique pig, Carruth gives us glimpses of the lives to which the piglets are attached. The farmer, simply known as "the selector" walks around his farm and observes his subjects unseen, threatening, almost the opposite of the benevolent angels of "Wings of Desire" who never intervene directly but always work wonders. For the most part, however, Carruth sticks with Kris (and her corresponding piglet) who works as a stand-in for all the lost souls who are going through the same ordeal. 

Kris meets Jeff (Carruth) when she is released into the world. They both seem lost and disconnected, but are attracted to one another. Both appear to be compatible to the core, "perfect" for each other. The courtship is fragmented, shown only through the bare essentials, not even containing any full scenes: when Jeff first saw Kris, when they first talked and went out, Jeff's proposal. These are all strung  together to make a comprehensible whole out of fragmented pieces. Kris and Jeff drift together through their wonder-world which no one else seems to inhabit. They take trips together, come to know one another. They get married and buy a house. All without interacting with the outside world. 

As they grow closer together and begin to share childhood memories, Kris and Jeff realize that they have lived through exactly the same circumstances. As they realize that their memories, and thus their identities, might not be their own, they become defensive and fight often. It is implied, though not explicitly shown, that Jeff went through a similar kidnapping/hypnotization as Kris as he has the same physical and psychological symptoms she does. Eventually, they come to fully realize what it means to be a couple and begin working together as a unit. 

As a romance, Upstream Color achieves what "To the Wonder" should have done, giving hope that a healthy relationship, although always in need of delicate care and constant attention, may survive. In the final minutes of the film, they search for the one who entrapped and manipulated them. I don't wish to spoil it, but the thrilling, uplifting ending redeems and enhances the tough initial sequences of the film and brings the difficult story to an immensely satisfying conclusion for those willing to sit through to the end. 

Verdict- 3.5/4 

Upstream Color (2013) 1h 36min. No Rating 

Random Thoughts

-the sound design of the film is striking. Scenes and shots are interconnected not by visual cues, but by sounds which is  unusual. At times, dialogue is almost inaudible while ambient sounds of rustling leaves and flying birds overtake the soundtrack in an almost musical way, never becoming distracting or unpleasant.

-Kris reconstructing the puzzle at the end is fitting since her past job, as the movie briefly shows, was as a film editor whose job it was to splice different pieces of film together into a coherent whole

-"Walden" is a novel that celebrates independence and isolation. Whoever abducted Kris and Jeff wanted to instill in their minds the idea that the only acceptable way of life for them was a lonely existence. Ironically "Walden" ends up becoming the clue that most helps the couple to work together. 

Superman

I'll keep this short, Man of Steel is not a very good movie. It is dark, slightly depressing, full of dizzying action sequences, and it interpreted one of the most important characters, Jonathan Kent, in a deeply problematic way. Basically, he did not want Clark to embrace his identity as Superman, a misguided idea for which he died when it was not necessary. However, the movie does have its redeeming characteristics mainly in its depiction of Jor-El which gave Russell Crowe a chance to shine. He's even better than Superman himself.

However, the best thing about Man of Steel is that it inspired several critics to revisit the much maligned Superman Returns, a film that I have loved since its release in 2006 and one which I admire more now given the recent wave of superhero films. Here are the links to a couple of my favorite pieces.

The first is a video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz and Ken Cancelosi which is particularly helpful in showing the links between the Christopher Reeve movies and Superman Returns:

VIDEO ESSAY: DEEP FOCUS: SUPERMAN RETURNS, Angel of America | Press Play

The second is an article by The Bitter Script Reader that explains, as the title points out "Why the world needs 'Superman Returns'" and argues, in part, that Superman Returns is an important father and son story:

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/opinions/why-the-world-needs-superman-returns.php

Verdict- 2.5/4 Man of Steel (2013)
              3.5/4 Superman Returns (2006) 

Before Midnight

Richard Linklater waited nine years to make the much anticipated third installment of his "Before" series. The first, "Before Sunrise," told the one-day love story of twenty-somethings Celine and Jesse who meet on a train and spend a day in Vienna. "Before Sunset" follows them nine years later when the two coincidentally reunite in Paris, where Celine lived and Jesse was on tour for his novel. The last we see of them is in Celine's apartment as she whispers to Jesse one the most tantalizing final lines in movie history, "baby, you're gonna miss that plane," the plane to the U.S where Jesse's wife and kid lived.  

Did Jesse miss his plane? Did he leave his wife to stay with Celine? Have they been together all this time? these were the questions on the minds of fans who had been waiting nine years for the revelation. Accordingly, Linklater begins with a shot of two pairs of feet. One seem like a man's legs, the other are a little bit more slender. Perhaps it's Celine and Jesse walking side by side as they always seem to do. Linklater holds on the shot and slowly pans up to reveal Jesse, but he's not with Celine. He's dropping off his son at the airport since the kid is supposed to go back to his  mother in Chicago. No mention of Celine. Linklater purposefully conceals her fate by dragging out the first scene of the movie. He understands what his audience wants to see and what it needs to see. With this scene, Linklater establishes seemingly trivial elements that will become significant later in the film while at the same time teasing his audience, carefully controlling its emotions.

I smiled during the first scene. It proved to me that Linklater was in complete control of a series that at times seems extremely improvisational. Then I smiled again at the payoff. Of course Celine and Jesse have been together all these years. They even have beautiful twin daughters, and, on the surface, their lives could not seem better.  

On the car in their way back from the airport, Celine and Jesse talk. They warm up the audience, slowly brining it into their lives once again. They begin by talking about inconsequential things. They argue about whether or not they should stop at the ruins, whether they should wake up their twin girls, and about Jesse eating, "stealing" using Celine's word, his daughter's snack. This lures the audience into the rhythm of the conversation. Linklater relaxes the audience as he shows that Celine and Jesse (as well as Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke) still have the same chemistry and artistry with words they exhibited in the first two movies. The initial scenes of the movie are almost overwhelmingly charming and beautiful, the perfect way to disarm a cynical audience before the abrupt and rather brilliant tonal shift that occurs on the last third of the film, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Celine and Jesse are staying at the guest house of a friend and mentor of Jesse's. Here, "Before Midnight" tackles some problems that are absent from the first two films, mainly what happens when Celine and Jesse interact with other people, other couples in particular. At times, their group of friends seem like members of the audience starstruck as they watch Celine and Jesse engage in conversation. In a truly inspired segment, Celine pretends to be Jesse's bimbo trophy wife, something that supposedly all men want. Most of the time, however, the other characters provide contrast and balance to Celine and Jesse and their ideas of love and marriage. At one point of the conversation, the characters talk about love in the digital age and whether any modern relationship can survive a lifetime The conversation meanders through all sorts of topics, but, as always, it comes back to love and the  the idea of  a "one true love." A widow gives a moving speech about her husband. She believes they were somehow "meant" to be together. Most of the other guests almost take it for granted that they will split up at some point. Celine and Jesse, both painfully well acquainted with divorce, tend to side with the majority. Linklater does not take sides. He merely observes his characters and lets them express their opinions fully. 

The first film took place in Vienna, and the second in Paris. The settings reinforced the themes and moods of the films.   Vienna was an unknown place of beauty that Celine and Jesse could discover together. Paris was Celine's home ground, a place where reality could easily invade Celine and Jesse's conversations.This time around, Celine and Jesse find themselves in Greece, a not-so-subtle hint at the aging, crumbling relationship explored throughout the film. The sights of the ruins are spellbinding, and there is enough open space for Celine and Jesse as they walk and talk through endless tracking shots. Linklater pares down his style (an accomplishment considering how elegant and concise the style of the first two films was) to make it appear naturalistic, almost invisible. There is no "moody" lighting or "fanciful" camera movement, only Celine, Jesse and their words. 

These words are sometimes charming, often brutal, always enthralling. Celine and Jesse have come to know each other so well that they know which buttons to push, which words will do most damage. Celine viscously attacks Jesse's ex-wife and, to the slight detriment of her character, expresses wishes that Jesse would abandon his previous commitments to be with her; Jesse tries to rationalize everything while seeking to turn simple, straight forward conflicts, into intellectual discussions, something he knows will aggravate his highly emotional (some would say paranoid) wife. 

Even after a devastating fight (that takes up 30 minutes of screen time) mostly concerning the ramifications of Jesse having left his wife and kid, Jesse concludes by saying that he still loves Celine and that he will continue to make sacrifices for her because he truly loves her and is committed to make their relationship work. Will their relationship continue? The film ends in an ambiguous, although slightly hopeful, note that at least suggests Celine and Jesses's adventures are far from over.

Verdict- 4/4

Before Midnight (2013) 1h. 48min. R 

Random Thoughts

-Way back in "Before Sunrise" Celine and Jesse met because they were both trying to escape the loud arguments of a German couple. Now, 20 years later, they have become that couple. Here's a great piece about it by Linda Holmes: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/05/23/186226960/before-midnight-jesse-and-celine-are-older-now-and-so-are-we

- This is, without a doubt, the best film I have seen this year. 

Blue

Krzysztof Kieslowski, the famed polish director, concluded his career with an ambitious masterpiece made up of three interconnected movies: Blue, White, and Red. Each film is named after a color of the French flag. Blue represents freedom. White stands for equality. Red is fraternity. Each film explores its color's core concept in intriguing, often ironic, ways. 

Blue starts with the sound of cars. An image of a freeway follows. The camera focuses on one car, and observes it, mainly from the outside. The intense ambient noises of the racing cars becomes unsettling. A child extends her hand out the window, holding a blue candy-wrapper that can be heard fluttering in the wind. Her ghostlike face can be seen through the windows of the car, but never directly. The car stops, and the girl gets out. Kieslowski cuts to a shot from beneath the car where some oil trickles down unnoticed. A voice can be heard calling to the child. Cut to a shot of the departing car. Cut to a young man by the side of the road, hoping to catch a ride. The car passes him by without stopping. The camera lingers on him. The style is simple and direct -- each different action gets only one shot -- and serves solely to create a sense of mounting dread. The crash takes place off screen; it it conveyed, as the most important elements of the movie, through the soundtrack. Blue represents freedom. Julie is freed from family. 

While Julie recovers at the hospital, she finds out that her husband and daughter died on the car crash. The audience sympathizes instantly, but is kept at a distance by Julie, just as she tries to do with all others around her. She feels hopeless and tries to commit suicide, but she is unable to end her life. She holds on to some unexplained reason to keep going, so she keeps on living. Kieslowski could be described as a pessimist, but that would be grossly inaccurate. He fascinates because he never fully gives up hope in his characters. They are always redeemable, even when they reach their lowest points. 

Julie sells her house, gets rid of all of her possessions and moves to an empty apartment in Paris for a fresh start. For a while, she lives alone, and talks to no one. From her window, she sees a man being beaten by three others. She wishes to help him as he runs past her front door, but ultimately she remains motionless inside her safe apartment. Soon after, she helps a neighbor in need and shows kindness to a homeless man. Behind the steely facade is a decent human being beginning  to resurface. 

Kieslowski's films are filled with chance encounters and near-misses. Had the young man from the start of the movie taken a ride on that car, he would have been dead. Instead, he lives. Seemingly out of the blue, he finds Julie and reminds her what happened that day. He is Julie's remaining link to her past life, so Julie treats him suspiciously, almost aggressively  He found Julie to give her a crucifix that he recovered from the crash site. He also wanted to give her the last words her husband said to her: "Now try coughing." It is the punchline of a joke her husband was telling. It seems like a throwaway line, but earlier in the movie, Julie asserts that she is human because she sweats, cries and coughs. 

But after the initial shock of the accident, she stops being human, she dulls the pain and tries to escape, leaving her remaining friends and relatives behind. Julie uses her new, minimalist apartment, and endless swimming bouts to escape and forget, to attain freedom from her family and her memories. Still, they come rushing back to her, because that young man never got in the car. All of a sudden, the things she was running from start to catch up to her and overwhelm her. 

Her husband was a composer. He was writing a symphony for the unification of Europe. Whenever she thinks of him or her child, the rousing music overtakes the soundtrack. The screen fades to black and all that remains is the music. Julie still seeks to escape, yet she hears it even when she is deep under water where she thinks no one can reach her. The music keeps coming back in different forms. She sees in the news that her husband's friend will seek to finish the piece. She thought she had destroyed the last copy, but it somehow survived. At one point, it is suggested that Julie wrote the music, and thus cannot get rid of it so easily since it invades her consciousness. 

It takes a while, but Julie starts giving in. She visits her ailing mother in a nursing home and kindly helps her husband's pregnant mistress. She even contributes to finishing the symphony. Her "freedom," was a form of self defense; selfish, perhaps, but who can blame her? Once she confronts the aspects of her life she would most like to forget, she finally begins to move forward and evolve. Throughout the movie, Juliette Binoche shows very little emotion. Her character is made comprehensible by the images and sounds presented by the director. But in the final seconds of the movie, Binoche breaks Julie's facade. She smiles.  

Random Thoughts.
-In all three films the main characters see a woman trying to place a bottle into a recycling bin. Julie does not help her.
- The protagonist of White can be seen here. The lives of the characters in the three movies are interconnected although it is not clear until the third movie.
- Red is the best. 

-At one of her lowest points, a reckless Julie tries to hurt herself by dragging her knuckles through a stone wall. Without a single word of dialogue, Kieslowski and Binonche convey just how much in need of help Julie really is. Although not very graphic, this is one of the most painful images I've seen. 

-There is little warmth in the visuals. The color blue invades the screen every shot of the movie. It perfectly conveys the unbearable sadness caused by Julie's tremendous loss.

-I don't know what to make of it, but my favorite shot of the movie is this image of a black coffee stain completely overtaking a white little sugar cube:

Verdict- 4/4 

Blue (1993) 1h 38min. R