{"id":2212,"date":"2013-05-20T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T04:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2013-05-20T01:42:47","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T05:42:47","slug":"upstream-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/upstream-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Upstream Color: Great Story, Awful Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"upstream\"
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\nUpstream Color<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Written and Directed by Shane Carruth
\n96 min.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more important, story or storytelling? I honestly have no idea.<\/p>\n

A great story will stick with you for the rest of your life, whether or not it\u2019s told well, because the beats of it, the brilliant bare components, resonate with your soul and become a part of you, and help expand how you see the world on a moral level. \u2018The Tortoise and the Hare\u2019 is a great story. It\u2019s so great we don\u2019t even stop and think about how great it is. It\u2019s just a part of us, as humans. You almost can\u2019t remember a time in your life when you didn\u2019t know it. And even if someone were to tell it to a little kid really poorly, its truth and importance would still come through.
\n
\nOn the other side of the coin, great storytelling can make you enjoy a story even if the story isn\u2019t particularly great\u2014hell, great storytelling can make you enjoy life<\/i> even if life <\/i>isn\u2019t particularly great. Louis CK is a perfect example of a great storyteller. Adam Carolla is right up there too. They\u2019re probably the best we\u2019ve got currently, in my opinion. They color things in a unique way that helps us contextualize the mundane, the sad, the serious\u2014basically, they can take any topic in this world and bring their highly particular slant to it. There\u2019s a consistency to the outlook of great storytellers that essentially makes them modern day philosophers.<\/p>\n

We all look for the best of both worlds when we watch a movie. Solid allegory and metaphor, but also resonance on a human condition level. But more often than not, we don\u2019t get exactly that. We usually get a movie where the story is a bit better than the storytelling, or vice versa, and we forgive the discrepancy because what was good was so good.<\/p>\n

But what do we do when faced with a movie that has an absolutely phenomenal story, and absolutely piss poor storytelling?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tough one.<\/p>\n

Such is the case with Upstream Color<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here we have a filmmaker who was struck by a lightning bolt from the gods with a completely brilliant, unique, interesting, and deep story. A golden gift from the universe. But he just did not have the storytelling chops, as a screenwriter or a director, to tell it properly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that he\u2019s a bad filmmaker per se. He just doesn\u2019t seem to know when what he\u2019s doing is working or not. The first act of this movie is actually quite good. I was floored by how much he had clearly improved since Primer<\/a>, his flawed-yet-worth-seeing debut. In the first twenty minutes or so of Upstream Color, everything is in its right place, and it\u2019s quite clear we\u2019re dealing with an auteur. The best thing about Primer, in my opinion, was the way he took something so ordinary and simple, a storage facility, and found the \u2018sci-fi\u2019 in it. Shane has an extraordinary ability at finding the sci-fi in ordinary objects. And that comes through like gangbusters in the first act of Upstream Color. The man has a unique and fascinating mind, and when he\u2019s in his element, the results are beautiful to behold.<\/p>\n

Things take a quite blatant downturn after that first act though, as Shane ventures balls first into territory he\u2019s absolutely inept at. Romance is not this man\u2019s strong suit. It\u2019s quite awkward watching him fail miserably as he tries to do the Charlie Kaufman thing of juggling both byzantine concepts and love. He\u2019s reaching. Hard. And I guess he thinks he\u2019s succeeding, because he spends a whole lot of time on romance in this movie. It\u2019s unfortunately the meat of the whole thing. I\u2019m not saying the film shouldn\u2019t have had a love plot line at all\u2014the story basically requires it in order for it to work\u2014I just think he should\u2019ve called someone in who knew more about that stuff. If not during the writing process, than in the editing room. If he had taken out all the least convincing romance scenes, the film probably would\u2019ve been way better.<\/p>\n

He also seems to have a bizarre desire to overcomplicate the uncomplicated. When you watch this whole movie, and learn what the entire story is, you see that it\u2019s actually quite elegant and simple\u2014and probably should\u2019ve just been told in an elegant and simple way, rather than arbitrarily been made difficult to follow for no real reason. Why create a jigsaw puzzle where no jigsaw puzzle needs to exist? I was totally fine with that in Primer, because it made sense for the story. This one, not so much. It\u2019s like he\u2019s doing it just because he thinks it\u2019s expected of him.<\/p>\n

This movie should\u2019ve just been a simple, straightforward, sci-fi parable, with some mystery and suspense sprinkled along the way, in a way similar to how its sprinkled in the first act. That\u2019s all. And were it that, it would be a five star movie, in my book. And one of the best science fiction movies of all time. And maybe one of the best science fiction stories<\/i> of all time, too.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t stress enough that the actual story in this movie is fucking phenomenal. I have no idea how a story like this even comes out of a person\u2019s mind. Which is part of the reason why I personally see artists as vessels. You can take that as spiritual or you can take that as metaphor, but what I mean is, the greatest ideas come from somewhere much higher than the artist. Whether the artist then conveys said idea well or not is something else entirely.<\/p>\n

See this movie. Trudge through the poor storytelling for the story, which you will never forget and think about often. It\u2019s one of the best allegories the universe has ever blessed us with.<\/p>\n

2 1\/2 out of 5 Codys. (Because I have no idea what\u2019s more important, story or storytelling. If I give it 2 stars, I\u2019m saying storytelling a little more important, if I give 3 stars, I\u2019m saying story is more important.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"upstream\"<\/p>\n

Upstream Color (2013)
\n<\/b>Written and Directed by Shane Carruth
\n96 min.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more important, story or storytelling? I honestly have no idea.<\/p>\n

A great story will stick with you for the rest of your life, whether or not it\u2019s told well, because the beats of it, the brilliant bare components, resonate with your soul and become a part of you, and help expand how you see the world on a moral level. \u2018The Tortoise and the Hare\u2019 is a great story. It\u2019s so great we don\u2019t even stop and think about how great it is. It\u2019s just a part of us, as humans. You almost can\u2019t remember a time in your life when you didn\u2019t know it. And even if someone were to tell it to a little kid really poorly, its truth and importance would still come through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[32,1589,1404,1591,104,185,1588,1590],"class_list":["post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysreviews","tag-cody-clarke","tag-cody-clarke-review","tag-primer","tag-shane-carruth","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-upstream-color","tag-upstream-color-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2224,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/2224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}