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Shane Carruth

Upstream Color – Shane Carruth (2013)

What a weird film! In the first scenes a woman is abducted, drugged and hypnotised apparently for some experiment. The kidnapper seems to have other strange experiments. Later we find Kris back at her house where it soon becomes unclear if the events actually took place.

After this she runs into a young man. Was he her abductor, was he a victim of the same man or is the whole film built of suppressed memories of either of them?

“Upstream Color” appears to be a collection of scenes that either or not have something to do with each other. The film does not really appear to tell a coherent story. I usually do not mind that, but in this case I have the feeling that there might be a story that I fail to grasp.

The film is slow, meditative and fairly minimalist. It is alright, but the vague impression it made, prevents me from saying that it is good. Perhaps I should just watch it again some day.

Primer * Shane Carruth (2004)

PrimerI like vague and incomprehensible films in which the story makes no sense, but I like it less when I have the idea that I lack the intellectual capabilities to understand a film!

“Primer” opens with four wizkid-inventors discussing all kinds of physical theories that I cannot follow. It does not help that the white subtitles are hard to see against the often very light background. Two of the wizkids are onto something big, discussing it in detail and I am totally lost. In the second half it becomes relatively clear what it is that the two men have created and then the film becomes vague in the sense that I like better. It is no longer clear what is what, who is who and when is when. “Primer” is a very complex film in different ways and I definitely need to see it a few times more before things will start to make sense. That is a good thing, since most films are ‘over with’ when I saw them ones, but the impression of the first watch did not leave satisfaction. This film is “a challenge” like people seem to love to put it nowadays.