The word on actor-director Shane Carruth’s sophomore film has been that it’s inscrutable, that people may need several tries to get it — film as SAT.
It’s true, “Upstream Color” teems with baffling visuals: paper-chains made of quotes from “Walden,” a man recording sounds in the forest, the lives and loves of a herd of pigs. But a story is just visible behind the ever-shuffling deck of symbols.
Briefly and reductively, Act 1: A man (Thiago Martins) feeds the heroine (Amy Seimetz) tiny, disgusting worms which turn her into a mind slave. At his prompting, she empties her bank accounts. She emerges from her stupor to a ruined life.
Act 2: She meets an ex-broker (Carruth) who’s probably been through the same ordeal. Their affair, at first tentative, then frantic, is the least opaque (although that’s an extremely relative concept here) and most-involving section. The tonal shift from body-snatching to love story is seamlessly elegant.
The nearly dialogue-free third act proposes (in my view, at least) the interconnectedness of us all: worms, plants, lovers, pigs and pig farmers. Pretty tepid tap water, as intellectual payoffs go.
This enigma-delivery system from a sharp mind has enthralling moments but becomes a bit enervating in its self-seriousness. By the end, the whole thing feels more academic than mind-bending.