A Masterpiece!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Upstream Color follows two adults, Kris and Jeff, who share a connection that they cannot explain. They try to figure out why they suffer from paranoid episodes and severe flashbacks to strange memories, discovering an elaborate scheme of manipulation. This Independent movie succeeds in structure and content, as the connections between people are shown, rather than told. The couple's struggles become alive and relatable, because of how they are presented within the fantastic realm of the movie. The rich thematic narrative and the heavy philosophical implications, considering people's isolation and estrangement from one another, make this movie difficult to understand in the first viewing - but all the more worthwhile.Overall 8/10 Full review on movie-discourse.blogspot.de

This ended up being a beautiful film, but it is clear that in the second half the film got a little bit off course. I can definitely see how people could not understand it. It doesn't mean that they are not smart enough it means they weren't paying attention well enough to be able to think it through and piece it together, but that was a problem with this film. Piecing it together. This is the first film where I actually had to think very hard about what I was watching and then piece it together which I will admit is a bit frustrating. It is good for a film to leave you thinking, but not to where you have to really think and piece together to understand it.

Shane Carruth is a writer and director I truly respect. I watched Primer and was inspired instantly. It was a low-budget, independent- minded micro-production about time travel and the consequences of such power. While the film did have some technical shortcomings, these could easily be overlooked because of a small budget, and an engaging script. However, Carruth's follow-up "Upstream Color" is nothing short of a self-important, delusional, masturbatory, film that encompasses the worst stereotypes of your typical film school "genius". An incoherent and uninteresting story is coupled with extraordinarily bad dialogue and ill-acting. Carruth, again in the lead role, seems to believe himself to be a better performer than he actually is. The dialogue is choppy and alien, the performances are understated but not emotionally potent, and the cinematography resembles that of a Gatorade commercial. Carruth is promising and talented, and hopefully he can come back from this misstep with his next project "The Modern Ocean". However, trying to win back my optimism after this film is going to be an upstream battle.

This movie represents what is wrong with the whole hipster scene. It's the type of movie that those people visiting modern "art" exhibitions and wearing fur consider so intellectual and great."Hey, let's have little dialogue, shake the cam and sacrifice some flora and fauna for the sake of a stupid movie, we will have all the trendy bunch praising us".No.And, guess what, I couldn't care less about your opinion, so go crying to your elite friends about it. You'll feel better after discussing it over some expensive wine.