Episode 754: Upstream Color (2013)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, it's show tied.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
People say, good money to see this movie.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, pop, popcorn,
and no monsters.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Got it off? Do you know this place?

Speaker 4 (00:43):
I want to say, yes, go in there for you.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
I want to I haven't said. Is there is there
a duration that you feel I'm gonna.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Go wherever you go.

Speaker 5 (00:56):
You know that.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
You're scaring me a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
I feel like, you know, won't let anyone near that.
This crowd back in the corner violent. I've never seen
the parents behave, so they can get very protective.

Speaker 6 (01:34):
The water before you is somehow special. It is better
than anything you've ever tasted. Each drink is better than
the last.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Take a drink now, Welcome to the projection booth. I'm

(02:45):
your host. Mike White joined me once again as mister
Ben Buckingham.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Hello, everybody.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Also back in the booth is mister Jim Lekowski.

Speaker 7 (02:54):
I could be a starling.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
We continue sci Fi July with a film from twenty
three teen, Chinkruf's Upstream Color, the story of a woman
who has drug robbed and becomes soulmates with a pig,
and no I'm not talking about Shinkruf himself in a
complex hypnotic film about cycles, trauma, and cheens. We are
going to be spoiling this film as much as it

(03:17):
can be spoiled, So if you don't want anything ruined,
please turn off the podcast and come back after you've
seen it. You really need to see this film. Let
me just say that right now. We will still be
here when we come back. So, Ben, when was the
first time you saw upstream color and what did you think?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm not one hundred percent sure of which year it was.
It was probably twenty thirteen, but it might have been
twenty fourteen. It was the Melbourne International Film Festival. It
was at the old Grady Union Cinema in their really
massive one that sat like eight hundred people, big screen,
old school like seventies eighties built plays, and me and
my mate wins at dead center, front row and just

(03:55):
like completely swallowed up by the whole experience, and we
loved it. I'd seen Primer ten years previous to that
and had been waiting eagerly for this film because it
took a while to get to Australian Shores, and yeah,
absolutely adored it at the time.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
And Jim, how about yourself?

Speaker 7 (04:15):
I started the Music Box Theater here in Chicago, Illinois.
I believe it was opening weekend when it came out
in twenty thirteen with Shane Caruth in attendance for a
very interesting and insightful Q and A. And my initial reaction, well,
I was like, Okay, all bets are off. This is
everything I want from cinema pretty much. And I know

(04:36):
I'm prone to hyperbole, but it has become over time
one of my favorite movies for a lot of reasons
that I'm sure we'll talk about, but yeah, I mean
that first viewing still I was disoriented and dazed and
completely unsure of what to think about, what it all
meant and even what Caruth's intention was, especially on first viewing,

(04:58):
because you know it, it's just something you have to
watch multiple times, I think, and to really let it
sink in. But this is just everything I want from
an intellectual movie experience, and I want something that surprises me,
that gets me out of my comfort zone, and this
is all of that and more. So we'll dive right

(05:20):
into exactly why I think it's pretty much a masterpiece,
but I have reservations that you may or may not
have alluded to early on in your intro there, Mike.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
I saw this one on video for the first time,
probably in twenty thirteen, maybe twenty fourteen, because it used
to take a little while longer for things to come
to VHS or DVD. It was probably DVD at that time,
twenty thirteen. And I'm pretty jealous of you guys having
seen this in a theater. I don't know why I
didn't see it in a theater. I liked Primer, liked Primer.

(05:54):
I didn't love Primer, but I liked Primer. I don't
know what it was about Primer, but I didn't have
any i's really following it. I don't know if I
just like locked into the rhythm or whatever. But I
was like, Oh, this is brilliant. But then when people
were like, oh, it's so confusing and they're making maps
and stuff, I'm like, I didn't really need that. It
was cool for like Maholland Drive. We want to make

(06:15):
me a map of Mahallan Drive. Sure feel free this film. Also,
when I got into it, I was a little confused
watching it, but then at some point I had this
aha moment and I just said, oh, all right, it's
all starting to make sense. What's happening between the worms
and the people and the pigs and the flowers. I'm

(06:39):
just like, okay, it's all coming to me now. And
when it was done, I was breathless. I am right
there with you, Jim. As far as this feeling like
a really perfect film, just everything about it just really
clicks for me. I know, I'm going to say the

(06:59):
word had I'm gonna say the film washes over you.
All those types of things are absolutely true. I think
a lot of that has to do with the music,
which is very lulling. He uses music so well, he
can pose the fucking music. Caruth really fits into that.
A tour model of stars in the film. He wrote

(07:21):
the film, he directed the film, He did the music
for the film. I don't know if he edited the film.
I need to look at the credits again. The editing
style goes so well with the music, which goes so
well with the shooting style. The whole use of a
very narrow depth of field so many times, and just
how he uses focus, how he frames things. Everything in

(07:42):
this movie fits together so well for me. Like this
beautifully crafted puzzle and you can go back and you
can just get more and more out of it every
single time. Like as I'm writing my notes last night,
I'm getting embarrassed because I'm like writing wah in the
in the notes, you know, I'm just like, look at
that shot. This is so perfect. Everything comes together in

(08:02):
a beautiful, beautiful way in upstream color.

Speaker 7 (08:05):
Yeah, he wrote the score. This is very unconventional, I think.
But he wrote the score while writing the script, which
is not something I think most filmmakers do. And I
don't know if that just led to the music being
so complimentary to everything going on, but it does have
this fluidity and this rhythm that makes this movie really

(08:27):
like as much of a visual experience but an auditory
one where you get really sucked into the sound design,
the ambient stuff, and even just everything involving what the
sampler does is very like Barbarian sound studio or Blowout
to some extent. I eat that stuff up as somebody
who really loves sound design. Everything you're saying is I

(08:49):
completely echo and still love this movie. But I read
some interesting articles in light of Caruth as a person,
and I don't want to lean into this too heavily,
because again, we have to separate the art from the artists, right,
I mean, that's just the nature of the beast when
you want to analyze a work of art. But at

(09:11):
the same time, there's a part of me that wonders,
whether consciously or not, if Caruth made this film about
like leverage and power and inflicting psychological trauma as a
window or a mirror of his own tendencies. Now that's
just like me hypothesizing. But at the same time, I

(09:32):
can't help but think of how people are saying these days, well,
instead of going to therapy, men do this, well instead
of going to therapy. Maybe Caruth created this work of
art as his outlet in a way. But again, like,
that's just something that would never have occurred to me
early on with early viewings. Now it's just something I'm

(09:53):
thinking about without it overwhelming me to the point of like, well,
I can't love this movie anymore because of learning about
what has done as a person. That's just something I
wrestle with a little bit.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
In the case of this film, denying the connections to
Cruth's own behavior and his choices is to deny the
way that upstream for color functions, that the film itself
is built upon the significance of these parallels and connections
between diverse aspects of existence in life, and so it's

(10:26):
almost like you're just like cutting out, like there is
no disconnecting it, because that the whole film is connections,
which is kind of like chin, yeah, just he did
too amazing a job that he like that to curse
his own film, that I can't separate it, and I
think it is important the same way that the Sampler

(10:46):
is both like seemingly a good person and a bad person,
that the film is juggling a lot of these things
without necessarily praising or damning, and because of the parallel
and connections, because he is so essential to it that
it has to be part of it. You can't think
of many films that I would describe as holistic filmmaking.

(11:09):
That it's definitely because Curate is so essential to so
many artistic and technical aspects that it does feel holistic,
that every part is important and essential.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
And an extension of him too as a person. He
injects his previous film a topiary that didn't come to fruition.
He injects that in there, having Chris work on that
as like an effects supervisor or producer. It looks like
having Chrispy played by any Amy Steinmitz, who's his significant

(11:41):
other at the time, having him in there and having
him as Jeff Jeff's pretty much a jerk.

Speaker 7 (11:47):
Oh yeah, he's a terrible person.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
I'm just like, yeah, how much are you holding this
mirror up to yourself as you're doing this, because so
much of this feels like such a personal extension to have. Also,
like you said, to have the stamp there. He is
creating music, and he's creating the music that we hear
in the film, which is pretty amazing as well. I
mean the montage of him creating these sounds and using

(12:10):
these sounds to form a song from that, and that
we're hearing all of that being created at the same time.
And then just the reliving of things, you know, I mean,
the whole movie is about reliving trauma. I mean, this
is he showing us a cycle at some point inside
of his own life or is this just kind of,
you know, an extension as far as like, this is

(12:34):
what trauma does? I have this trauma, maybe not knowing
that he's expressing that trauma through abusive behavior.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, there's a Q and A. He gives it. The
Vivian subject talks about in her film comment article where
he was asked what is this about? And he said,
I don't know, and I was like, yeah, I probably
I would say, based on the little bit that we
know that, yeah, he doesn't know that, he doesn't have
He wasn't at a point where he was able to

(13:01):
recognize how much you can watch this film with a
lens of knowing the allegations of domestic violence and see
how much it's fair. How difficult it is to watch
in places because it feels like so much of a controlling,
not okay person exerting a lot of influence and power.

(13:25):
But the film is also querying that and attacking that
in other ways, not necessarily through himself, but through the thief.
It's always difficult to psychoanalyze a person in the film
because you don't have everything that you may need to
do that fully that it does feel like it's somebody

(13:49):
breaking apart all the parts of their personality and putting
them into different sections. And the reason why Upstream Color
works so well still is because those parts also connect
really powerfully to the biggest social and political sphere of
how systems function to control us and direct us and

(14:11):
take away our power, and so it becomes this really complex,
multilayered parable that I said that I loved this back
in the day, I don't remember much of what I
felt or thought about it, But returning to it now,
I had a lot more of a complicated experience. And
I think after watching it the second time ever last

(14:32):
week I didn't like it, and then digging into some
reading materials and ruminating on it, I didn't rewatch it
again at first. For a third time, I actually put
it on Vincent Bluetooth headphones and went outside and collected
wood for the fire. It's the only thing we have
for eating is a fireplace. And it was a very

(14:55):
powerful experience to experience it like that, just listening to
the sounds and the dialogue and the movement of it
and feeling it while I did actions like occur in
the film.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
I was going to say, you're you David there right there,
I'm just going to say that too, yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, And that did sort of like fift out some
of the things which I were probably having more difficulty with,
and it was like again made me be turned to
it as this holistic thing, which even though it is
all the parts are so important, they are all yeah, moving,
and it's okay to like not sit with them sometimes

(15:33):
and sit with other parts. And then I rewatched it
a third time, actually watching it, and again it sort
of came and went with how I feel about it.
But it was like it felt like reading reading through
some of the things that people have written about it,
every theory and casual viewers like watching the third time

(15:56):
was popularly the third time was like felt like running
my fingers through soil and like feeling all the parts
of the soil and the bits of matter decaying or
stares and things, and like getting ready to plant something
like the film feels like fertile soil. And I don't
know still how I feel about it now, but I

(16:18):
love how much has grown out of it.

Speaker 7 (16:21):
Yeah, I completely echo what you're saying in terms of
having a complicated relationship with it, while also acknowledging the
fact that I still feel deep down that it is
a great work of art, and watching it again and
reading something like a research paper that Anna Maria Greisbawska

(16:45):
wrote called Invisible Cuts, where she basically says that this
film makes a spectacle out of a woman's psychological degradation,
and it's really critical of Kruth as a story teller.
And I struggled with watching Jeff, like you mentioned Mike too.
He is kind of a jerk, and I think part

(17:06):
of me is of course projecting, well, that's Shane Caruth.
And what do I know about Shane Caruth? He was
an abusive asshole, so when he was on screen, that's
probably when I struggled the most. I love everything about
this movie. I mean, the thief himself is responsible for
stripping away someone's agency and autonomy. And even the way

(17:28):
Jeff interacts with Chris at times it does feel like,
oh yeah, he's kind of psychologically dominating her, or at
the very least, especially when they're first having conversations, he
does come across as very cold and calculated, like when
she's trying to be open with him at the coffee
shop by like showing these are the medications I'm taking.
He outright like blocks that out with a menu or something,

(17:53):
and he just comes across as lacking kindness towards her.
That made me go, uh, how did they develop a
romantic connection here? Outside of they have an attraction based
on the fact that probably they're connected without knowing why,
they've both experienced the same trauma.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
But how much is that them falling in love versus
their pigs falling in love.

Speaker 7 (18:17):
Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
We dove immediately into Caruth and I want to talk
a little bit more as far as just the way again,
talk a little bit as far as the way the
film is put together. The traumatic incident that happens with
Chris happens very early in the film, which I forgot
about the first time, and when I went back to
watch it, I was like, oh, Okay, yeah, this happens

(18:39):
really early on. And that thing where she's abducted. She
drives the thief to her house and he systematically, like
you said, strips her of everything, breaks her down completely.
He doesn't let her sleep, he doesn't let her eat.
He just has her drink water, has her write out

(19:01):
pages from Walden and make chains with them, paper chains.
And I love the idea of the paper chains, especially
because this whole thing is about these chains that are
being formed, the whole cycle of the flower to the worm,
to all this. I'll talk more a little bit about
eggs later on. But this whole idea of like her
being broken down so much. This movie is a horror

(19:25):
movie for a good fifteen minutes. I call it a
science fiction movie, and I think the science fiction and
some people actually chaf about that because it's like, oh,
there's no robots or ray guns or anything. I'm like, no,
anything that is unexplainable. It's that old whose line was
it as far as like, if it's not explainable, it
could be magic or science for me, And like the

(19:47):
science of this movie, it's like, sure, there's probably a
toad that you lick, or a bug that you adjest,
or something that makes you so susceptible. I mean, it's
the old stories of voodoo in the old days, where
it's like, no, voodoo wasn't bringing people back from the dead.
It was making people mindless slaves, the same stuff that
Jeffrey Dahmer was looking to try to do. He wanted

(20:08):
to turn people into mindless slaves. The thief can do it.
He's found that way. He could have fun with the
neighborhood boys in a very very groomy scene. To me,
I mean those neighborhood boys. Feels like he's got more
going on with them, especially if he can control their
minds the way that he doesn't. I don't know if
he literally has sex with Chris, if he rapes Chris.

(20:31):
But all of the stuff that happens with Chris is
a rape. It is a long, prolonged rape of taking
everything from her, every single thing, and especially the money.
And you know, I mean, twenty thirteen was a rough time.
Twenty twenty five, you don't have that money in the bank, man,
you are just about to be absolutely homeless. You know,

(20:52):
you miss one, like one card payment comes in extra,
You're ruined for your entire life. I can't imagine what
she's going through, the ruination of her whole thing. I
read the script of this, and I found it to
be interesting some of the differences between the script and
the movie, because I believe her sister is a character
in the script and is completely blown away by Chris

(21:17):
selling the coin collection, getting all the money out of
her account, putting in that home equity alone, all that stuff,
And of course she blames Chris. She just tries to
guilt her. I can't believe that you did this. Everybody's
going to be so disappointed. And then also that the
thief uses her family against her, Like that's the way
that he gets the money, is saying, your mother's been kidnapped.

(21:39):
They're going to brutalize her, and what can she do
and just immediately starts thinking of ways that she can
get money to these kidnappers. I mean, this whole sequence
of her in this house, forget the worms, forget any
of that stuff. That is a horror movie for me,
for a good solid chunk of it.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, And it opens with that amazing crash thunder as
he opened he had in the scene where she's in
a cafe or a restaurant and there's a nice verbling
murmur of social sounds and then just suddenly they crash
of thunder. It cuts to the door and being dragged
out like she's already dead with the raid and everything.
Like when I was listening to that without looking at
the visuals that it didn't make me jump a little bit.

(22:19):
It is just immediately shifts modes and that whole sequence.
It can be interpreted in so many ways. That's kind
of the part that I came back to the most
for like digging into ways of thinking about it that
what he does has her doing reminds me a lot
of how cult leaders will have people doing menial, mindless

(22:43):
tasks and singing songs and doing all these kind of
things so that they absorb all of their free energy
and free thinking time and just drain them so that
they can't think for themselves or do anything other than
what the cult demands.

Speaker 8 (22:58):
Starting now, and not to play. If you blink, we
go back to the start. Infringement. You blinked. Starting now,
you're not to blink. If you blink, we go back
to the start. Do you often think about how inconsequential
you are? Do you believe that God will save you

(23:19):
from your own ridiculousness? Have you ever had intercourse with
someone inside your family?

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (23:27):
Have you ever had intercourse with someone inside your family?

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (23:31):
Auntie? Have you killed anyone?

Speaker 6 (23:33):
No?

Speaker 3 (23:33):
Maybe not me?

Speaker 8 (23:35):
Have you killed anyone? How many times do you have
intercourse with your aunt?

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Three times?

Speaker 8 (23:40):
Where's your aunt?

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Now?

Speaker 8 (23:41):
Would you like to have intercourse with there?

Speaker 4 (23:43):
Again?

Speaker 8 (23:44):
Do you regret this?

Speaker 6 (23:47):
No?

Speaker 1 (23:48):
But it also reflects on a you know, at a
grander scale, how we are indoctrinated by systems of control
and power in schools and parents, in peer groups, to
be specific, ways, and how the idea that maybe you
don't ever actually choose your life, that you get slotted

(24:09):
into these paths and spend you know, you wake up
twenty years later and you in a horrible marriage and
a terrible job, and you don't feel like you've lived
a life and how in a way then having Thoro's
Walden is entirely about that, about how do you know
that you're living your best true life to yourself if

(24:30):
you're just slotting into the system of you know, Emerson's
imitation is suicide. That had me thinking that, like, does
the thief feel like this is an exchange, that he
isn't just stealing from them, that he is giving them something?
Tyler Durden, I was just going to.

Speaker 7 (24:48):
See that that definitely came to mind of like that
whole idea of you know, reconstructing your narrative but taking
away your identity so you can rebuild it. And you know,
I think that's a new victually what Caruth kind of
set out to tell with the story, But it just
it became so much more like even on the surface level,
you can look at it as like, well, this is

(25:09):
what identity thieves do. In fact, that scam that he
pulls with the mother is similar to what identity thieves
do to the elderly. It was actually in a movie
fairly recently called Thelma with June Squibb, where somebody calls
her and says, hey, guess what, your son's in prison
or you know, he's been kidnapped or something along those lines,

(25:31):
and if you send ten thousand dollars, then he'll be
released and he'll be okay.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
And she falls for that.

Speaker 7 (25:38):
But here it's just a whole other level with like
psychological rape.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Basically. Yeah, and just as you was saying, Mike, like
the thing about any kind of altruistic positive outcome that
the thief may think that he is performing in doing
this to her is completely undermined by the economic realities
of the world. That it's like, you're absolutely screwed if

(26:03):
you don't have these things. That is interesting also in
the way of how you relive in an ideological system
that blames the individual, that it's not about the system,
it's not about the you know, the environment that they're in,
the community, they're in, the world they're in. It's all
their fault if they become this or if that happens

(26:23):
to them, which is also what happens to them, you know.
And I really like how Jeff talks about what happened
to him, because at first, if you're still like when
your first time watching this, you're like, well, if you
haven't seen it in ten twelve years and you like
still turning it all together in your head. When he
talks about robbing the company, like you think of him

(26:44):
as a thief, but it's like, oh, no, of course
that's he's the incident, that's the thing that happened to
him where he was controlled and the robbed the company
fall on behalf of the actual thief. And it's just
like it forces you to readjust how you think about
that person behavior and the morality of it. It's doing
so much in this very small period of time.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
That's the insidious thing about this is when Jeff wakes up,
when Chris wakes up, when any of these victims wake
up from this drug induce stupor. And I love that
at one point you think that they are awake after
the thief leaves, you know, there's that long sequence of
Chris and I was talking about the shallow depth of
field and you kind of fragment her body. We see

(27:28):
the fingers and the feet and the legs and that,
and for me, I'm like, okay, well, this ordeal is over.
But then the worms come and the worms happen, and
she gets hypnotized by the music, and just the same
kind of music that's bringing up the worms from the ground,
like earthworms rather than these drug induced worms. The same

(27:50):
kind of thing that's doing that is the same thing
that's drawing her to the farm. And it took me
a while to remember, oh no, she's not done with
this drug trip yet. She is still completely zonked with this.
It's not until she wakes up on the freeway and
that's when the drug trip is over. And that scene
is horrific again to me, that you're waking up and

(28:12):
at first it sounds like it's the wind. Talking about
the way that he manipulates sound. It's wonderful. You think
that it's wind, and then you're like, no, that's the
sound of roaring traffic. And she wakes up and she's
like in the median of a fucking freeway and you're like,
how did she get here? She has no idea, We
have no idea. That ride must have been really scary

(28:33):
for her, and especially when she stopped. We don't know
what that was like then she has to put the
pieces back together, and this whole thing of like you're
saying blaming the victim, they're blaming themselves, like what did
I do? Did I have some sort of drug trip?
Did I go? Because he says later on like, oh,
I must have been high on cocaine, Like he thinks

(28:54):
that he had a drug problem. Jeff had a drug problem.
It's like, you probably didn't have a drug problem. Maybe
he did, but I don't think so. I think he
is filling in these gaps, trying to make up excuses
for why the hell did I do this? She's probably
doing the exact same thing. And that, again, to me,
is just one of the most horrific things that you

(29:14):
are giving people such trauma. That and this is so
true to life. When you undergo really bad trauma, you
try to fill in those gaps. You try to make
up stories to comfort yourself. If you have gaps in
your memories, you try to make up things to fill
those gaps. And they are filling them with the most
self indicting things, making them feel even worse about themselves

(29:37):
for something that they had absolutely no control over.

Speaker 7 (29:41):
Yeah, and I think of that in the context of
mental health too, because people fall into those fugue states
or when they experience mania, they don't always have like
an awareness of what they're doing to where Yeah, it
creates a lot of unfortunate tension with other people because
they don't know how to perceive your state of mind.

(30:03):
And at the same time, you're doing things that you
think are the right things when they're actually the wrong thing.
So it's a really layered film to discuss and think about.
But like, yeah, the first time I saw it, I
could not make heads or tails of why necessarily the
sampler was able to what his role in everything was,

(30:26):
especially in the beginning when they first met, Like how
did he find her? I know that he was using
those speakers as almost like in a dune like sense,
to conjure up the worms by thumping. When I first
saw that, I was like, so, what's this guy's deal?
And that sequence early on again talk about body horror,
just like having to extract that worm and that capacity

(30:49):
and transferred over to the pig is pretty harrowing.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's the other thing. When she
wakes up, she also sees how her body has been mutilated.
She doesn't know that she's the one that mutilated it.
She has no idea, she could be the victim of whatever.
And that then also plays into the whole thing of
her when she thinks she's pregnant and they go, oh, no,

(31:14):
you're not pregnant. You have nothing going on in your
body that would say that you aren't pregnant. They put
her through a whole battery of tests and find out
that she had had cancer stage three. It's they say,
but now it's removed. And also she basically will never
have children or if she can conceive, she'll never carry

(31:35):
it to term. That scene contains to me like the
lying of the movie where it's the nurse off screen
just as a voiceover say, how are you supposed to
help someone like that? How are you supposed to help
someone like that? Total victim blaming here, thinking that Chris

(31:57):
is just being difficult, that she pretending that she doesn't
know that she's had stage street cancer and had this
thing removed, no idea, And then I'm questioning, was that
the sampler did he take that out? How did that happen?
Or was that the thief's baby?

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Like what you know?

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Like what instance, like, is that the gift of the worm? Like,
so she has been violated even more than this already violation,
this violation that the thief does to her, and that
then she also does to her own body. I mean,
when she goes back to her house after she wakes
up that on that freeway and sees all those cuts
all over her body, it looks like a fucking crime scene.

(32:39):
Just the blood everywhere. This fridge is completely torn apart.
I mean, everything is a complete mess. It looks like
someone went through and just destroyed everything, not knowing that
it was herself.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I'm just thinking that in a way, this film is
a Blurst film less than Cursed. There's so many things
in it that are both blessed and cursed, and that's
one of them that like, Okay, so she doesn't have
stage three cancer anymore, but she's not going to be
able to have kids. It's blest and cursed at the
same time. Again, those sort of dualities that are also singularities.

(33:16):
There's so much that's inexplicable in here, and you can
like spend forever trying to figure it out, but it
just isn't. Then that is a big part of the
sci fi aspect of how it extrapolates and bills on
sort of knowns and then into unknowns. And the thing
that the upstream color does is it doesn't necessarily kind
of skips over the unknown and goes into what some

(33:38):
other known that you don't get that continuity, which is
also the experience that Chris has, that she loses continuity there.
Narrative has a fracture, a missing peace, and how much
that destabilizes her. I wonder how much like viewers who
aren't comfortable living in that sort of state that can't

(34:02):
deal with that are the ones who get thrown out
of this film and who react so intensely negatively to
it because they have to have an absolute continuity of
meaning and understanding. And it just like treasors buttons, because
this film definitely dresses a variety of buttons. I can
see it definitely being a film that would there's certainly

(34:24):
parts that are traumatic and could definitely induce some sort
of PTSD episodes for people who have gone through various experiences.
And a big part of that is that it is
just sitting so close to a lot of very difficult
and complicated emotions. That's the primary continuity is emotional experience.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
When I was looking up because I will do this
these days, just because there's a lot of movies that
I talk about, whether there's not a lot of extras
or even you know there are. I mean, I think
I've found a couple hundred pages worth of articles about this,
so I was able to do that. But yesterday, when
I was at work, I was like, I want to
watch some video essays about upstream Color and just hear

(35:08):
what people have to say about it. And when I
did just a simple search on YouTube, I would say
probably six out of eight videos that I watched were
all narrated by people that identify as women. And I
found that fascinating because I was like, normally, you know
film criticism. Here we are three dudes. It's the realm

(35:31):
of dudes. And I was so glad that I could
hear these female voices talking about this film, especially because
with Chris being our main character and the idea of
this trauma behind I was like, Okay, yeah, I want
to hear what women have to say about this, And
I just found that to be wonderful that there were
so many women that were talking about this movie and

(35:52):
it wasn't just a bunch of guys being like, oh yeah,
like what would I do with that, you know, mind
controlled drug dude, or any of that kind of I mean,
not that there were any like assholes like that that
I found out there. Everybody was giving some really good
insights on this. I do really like the essay talking
about the video essay talking about Walden and just how

(36:12):
that connects to this. I would almost let to go
a little bit further and talk about Emerson as well
with this whole creedive. I am a transparent eyeball because
I find that that really fits with this film too
much more on the tail end when it comes to
the way that the sampler can enter into people's lives
and just be completely transparent but observing. And there's that

(36:36):
moment of power that happens towards the end of the
film where Chris can look back and that disconcerts him,
and I love that that is like the moment where
she finally gets that power back. But that's so far
into this movie because you have to deal with this trauma.
I mean, she wakes up about twenty five minutes into

(36:59):
this movie, and the rest of this film is basically
her trying to deal with what the fuck happened to her.
And I love that this movie takes that long, because
it's about an hour and a half a little bit over.
It takes more than an hour for her to process
this stuff. She's never going to be fully the same

(37:19):
way that she was. I mean, she has to literally
live a new life by the end of this film.
But just the idea of how long it takes to
process and means hundreds of hours of therapy and all that,
you know, like if you're lucky kind of thing. There
are so many people that don't know that they've been traumatized.
She definitely knows something happened, but it takes her even

(37:40):
then a while to figure that out. It's not until
she starts to put these clues together. It's almost like
she and Jeff start to investigate themselves. And I like
them as a couple once they finally do get together.
But yeah, it takes a while for Jeff. He never
really warms up to me. I think he's a dickhead
all the way through this whole film, and he gets
so upset he starts to and I don't know if

(38:03):
he's doing this on purpose, and that I don't know
if she's telling the truth. The whole idea of him
stealing her memories. I found that to be fascinating as well,
the way that they're mixed up together, when she's telling
that story about almost drowning and he takes it as
his own, and I'm like, Okay, who really did have
that happen? And is it one of those things where

(38:23):
you hear somebody tell a story so many times, or
you hear someone tell a story that is very meaningful
to them, and you start to feel so close to
them that you start to picture what if I was
there as well?

Speaker 7 (38:35):
Yeah, where does one person end and the other begin? Like,
especially when you're so fully invested in a relationship with
another person. It's like, even with my partner, it's kind
of funny how sometimes we pick up on, Oh, you're
starting to do that little habit that I do, you know,
and just because we you know, we're living together or

(38:57):
we you know, share so much that it is kind
of funny when those like correlations happen and you don't
even realize it. But I do think about, you know,
just the sampler as a character too, because it's interesting.
I really do love you know the fact that this
almost becomes a silent film for maybe the last twenty
minutes or so, but that warehouse moment where they're sort

(39:19):
of just looking at each other with and those facial
expressions and body language say so much in those moments.
But at the same time, I'm still not entirely clear
why she chooses to kill him, because technically the thief
is the person that screwed her over. I mean, my
feelings were the Sampler had like helped her regain her

(39:43):
life in a way by getting the worm out. You know,
I never saw him as the quote unquote bad guy,
but you know, we have talked a lot about nobody
is good or bad necessarily. I just thought it was
it's not the moment that like, I feel like it's
completely out of place, but it's just the link angeren.
Question I had was what does she gain by killing him?

(40:05):
And is it necessary to the story too.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
I was thinking about this as well, because it was that,
as I said earlier, that he starts off and you
think that he is a positive character, but by the
end of it, he seemingly is not. For myself, as
someone who spends a lot of time over my life
with animals, and I've been fostering some feral cats recently,
and one of them, I'm pretty sure she had been

(40:31):
dumped because the only thing she was afraid of was
plastic bags, which tells me that she was probably stuck
in a plastic bag and jumped out of a car.
So the scene with the piglers where he puts them
in the Hessian bag and just drops them in the
creek to drown is like, even just thinking about it now,
it's like, it's really just fucking horrible. It's so absolutely

(40:55):
unforgivable to me, Like there's just no excuse, no reasons,
Like because you have seen just before where the guy
wants to sell the pigs and you're kind of like,
oh no, don't sell the pigs. He can't split him up,
and he say, oh, I'm not going to do that.
You're like, oh good, and then he does something worse
that really complicates it. I don't exactly want to pull
this idea in because I don't think it quite fits,

(41:17):
but I couldn't escape it. On multiple viewings of it
kind of looks a bit like it feels like a
Zuckerberg type, like someone is hovering there at people's connections
and parasitic, like getting some kind of energy off of that.

(41:39):
He's tapping into other people's connections and networks and being
present in their lives without them knowing or necessarily inviting him,
but without knowing it they've agreed to that by going
to him, or they're still under the spell. And so
it's like, oh, yeah, social media is a positive except

(42:01):
that it has not become a positive thing. There's something
in there that there's an echo of that from me
that is like, oh yeah, there is a positive aspect
to what the sampler does, but it's not actually positive.
It's not turned to entirely good outcomes or it's not

(42:22):
made into something better. Like he's still keeping these people
separated and disconnected, even though he has all these files
of them and he has these connections to them. And
that's what the actual act of the freeing moment when
they break loose is not when they kill him, but
when they reconnect these people by giving them their information back.

(42:43):
It's like, actually, not instead of just being like, oh,
I'm overseeing all of this status quo, I'm actually like
breaking apart the status quo. There's no part of the
film which gives him an opportunity to speak for himself
and to say give his justification, which I actually respect

(43:04):
because it's just like, yeah, nah, now you had plenty
of times sitting there ruminating doing your thing, and you
were still just art and about making music and sticking
in nosing other people's stuff and keeping these walls up. Yeah, no,
he's not worth the time. There's other ways and people
who can do those same things and maybe not keep

(43:24):
the walls up, and they deserve the oxygen more so.
I also wonder what if actually that was one part
I went back and rewatched a couple of times they
see him, they look him in the eye, and he
is seen, and it is in an empty office space area,
and then he gets up and moves away and kind

(43:46):
of collapses against the wall, and then they're in the
pig yard, but he's started clutching his heart and then
she shoots him. And I do actually wonder about what
happens there and how much of it is literal and
how much is symbolic. And it reminds me of the
Samuel Beckett's Only film film in which Buster Keaton is

(44:12):
attempting to flee from being observed, and how like it's
there's no escape from this existential dread of being seen.
And it's like, oh, it appears that it is actually
the act of being observed that kills him, like his
heart begins to give out, and her shooting him is
more to do with her and her dominating him and

(44:41):
in that process separating from him and obliterating him. But
I think there's there, there's a the series there is complicated.

Speaker 7 (44:54):
Yeah, yeah, I struggle with that too. And if you
intentionally drown animals, maybe you should get killed. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
And symbolically the animals are her children, you know, they're true, true,
absolutely the rage that she has when she feels those
babies taken away, that she mutilates herself again by punching
that glass. And that's the interesting part to me too.
As far as the editing goes, I mean, the editing
in this film is just terrific. I love when the

(45:22):
thief talks about how his head is made out of
the same material as the sun, and you get her
turning away and the light on the side of her
face and she turns three times. It's very John wu
turning and that sun, that light on the side of
her face. But when the Sampler steals the babies. I
don't know if I'm sure. You guys have been around

(45:44):
as I know, especially you Ben, I've been around a
lot of video equipment. It reminds me of shuddling through
a video, going back and forth with the control knob,
and it feels like we're going back and forth in time.
And this could be completely wrong. I could just be
misreading this scene completely, but it feels like we kind
of start with her reaction and follow how she reacts

(46:07):
to this whole thing, and then we shuttle back and
then see how Jeff reacts to this whole thing too,
the way that he gets this rage and that he
attacks as co workers and that they fire him, and
he has that box of his stuff and he throws
that down into the atrium on the fly, files flying everywhere.
It's very, very beautiful the way that it's shot. But

(46:28):
it is just so wild the way that we're going
back and just this whole thing of how she calls
him and he knows exactly where she's at in that
he recognizes. I don't know how he recognizes if it's
the way that she describes the room that she's in,

(46:49):
but he recognizes that she's in his office building and
talks her through. Reminded me a little bit of that
Tony Scott from Deja Vu with Denzel Washington, where there's
like two layers of reality on top of each other.
But he's like talking her through the office and his
car pulls up just as she's coming out of the
back door, and that reunites them. And because there is

(47:11):
a lot of struggle, there's a lot of friction between
those two, and there's a moment where she like just
leaves him, but that reunification happens after the babies have
been taken and now they are a couple and they
have to face this thing together. But they are so scared,
so scared from that the way that they are in
the bathtub, and I love it. It's kind of the

(47:32):
iconic image from this movie, them and the bathtub together.
But I love how them and the bathtub together becomes
the wide screen of the film that we're showing them
sideways from up above, and just that framing of those
two together in the bathtub is just wonderful. And that's
one of those things where I'm just like, I'm not

(47:52):
just watching a film, I'm watching something that is taking
me to a whole other place.

Speaker 7 (47:56):
Yeah, And it makes and it makes me think of
what it's like to have panic attack, because sometimes you
don't know why or what's causing it or what's triggering it,
and you just know you have to get away. And
that's kind of what they do. They sort of hunker
down and try to get through whatever they're feeling together,
and it's palpable fear, and you feel for them. You know,

(48:17):
it's crazy to be like, even I feel for a
couple in this movie that we don't even really know
a whole lot about. It's when the sampler is observing
other people's lives and kind of like this onlooker voyeuristic fashion.
And there's that couple that's constantly like when one of
them is leaving for work and the wife keeps saying

(48:39):
the same thing over and over again, and I'm like,
I don't even Yeah, I find that so moving, even
though I had no context for who these people are.
It's just it works in of itself all by itself.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, really taps into such a wealth of human experiences
and emotions, and it isn't it isn't bogs down by
having to set it up or explain it or context it,
which really works in its favor. And it's funny because
it's having rewatched Primer, I have might I have a

(49:14):
theory that I think the Primer actually had a lot
more in the back end and care maybe realized was
better to have nothing and leave people with a mystery
than to like saple the energy out of the film
by having more. And it kind of I both respect that,
and also it feels a bit like a grift que
you've got to like cheated that you're like, oh, no,

(49:36):
I'm actually an amazing deep films like no, you just
cut out a junk the and I think that works
better here in upstream color. It doesn't feel so much
like it's a cheat. It feels genuinely like, oh, you've
just managed to capture the bit that connects us to it,
and it becomes that reflecting pool. And that's why I
think you see the lot of people who do connect

(49:57):
with this film like it really stirs something up in
them and generates a lot of feelings and thoughts. And
I think that's a big part of that is the
aspect of bonding over trauma and how that can generally
be not a great thing. But it's it can be
important sometimes to have somebody that you connect with like that,

(50:18):
even if it's just to get through your stage of
your life to progress to the next part. And I
think that the film does that well. And that is
where it's like that thing of that it's not necessarily positive,
that relationship isn't necessarily good or healthy, and that they
do bounce off each other in quite difficult and chaotic
way is and it feels best when they're both on
a path moving forwards, like it's mystery that they're solving.

(50:42):
But that is necessarily a good relationship thing. It's very
like complex and difficult to keep saying. I think, I
go how many times I get to say the word
complex and difficult.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
As many times as I say hypnotic.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
It's aging really well with film. It's funny because it
has aged really badly because of roots himself. I watched
it with my coworker here and in his early twenties
and had never seen any career of films, and he
knew all about a career before that. He saw the
film and he had a real difficult time with it
because he just couldn't see any other aspect of it,

(51:15):
which was interesting to see, and I don't disagree with
that viewing experience. But there's other ways, like the social
media stuff, which social media hadn't really become a thing
at the time it was made, the connectivity of that
and the networks. But there's also the ecological environmental collapse aspect,
which that he experience that a lot of people are
having of like extreme depression and fear and panic over

(51:41):
the horrific things that are happening in the world to
the environment, to ecologies, to animals, extinctions and things, and
how that's something seemingly so disconnected from us but is
absolutely connected to us. And being struck by these intense
emotional feelings from things happening so far away, it just
it really, it's just another layer that feels this is

(52:03):
exactly why it's a science fiction film, because the things
that may be seem more abstract and fantastical have now
just become normal.

Speaker 7 (52:11):
Yeah, prescient, for sure.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
It's interesting how much of the script didn't get shot,
or if it did, that they left it out. I mean,
there's so much dialogue that is in the script that
just didn't happen. There's a thing that they do around
trying to locate. It's like that I think of like
Odd Thomas, like how they'll just kind of wander around

(52:36):
and then be able to find things they can. They're
trying to find things, they're searching for things. They're trying
to really connect with that missing time, with that trauma
that they had so they can start to understand it.
They will do this thing where they will go out driving,
and they showed in the film a little bit as
far as like, well, you know, is it two lefts

(52:57):
and a right or this kind of stuff. They end
up coming up with this whole thing of like index cards,
so they're not showing each other their answer. Well, they
they'll have a card in their hand that says left
or right and then they have to show it at
the same time, and then they go from that. And
later on in the film they really cut this whole
part out, which I was glad for actually, which was
when all of the trauma victims are coming together and

(53:19):
going to the farm. They're doing the same thing and
they're all in a van and they're all like saying
left or right, and they find that there are two
people that don't belong there, that they didn't undergo this
trauma that they're just there for somebody that they know,
and they're screwing up the whole left or right game
that they're playing. It's not a game, but the whole
left or right thing. And we kind of get that

(53:41):
too when it comes to some of the shots of
the birds in the way that the birds are all
moving together like a flock, it's like these people have
become a flock of people. They've become what's a group
of pigs called.

Speaker 9 (53:52):
A group of pigs is called a drift or drove.
A group of young pigs is called a litter. A
group of hawks is called a past sell or team.
A group of sline is called a sounder. A group
of bores is called a singular.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
But they become a group of pigs, you know, all
kind of going around like these birds flying, you know,
like which way do we need to go? Okay, we
are like locating where we all belong because we're connected
to these pigs, We're connected to what the sampler is doing.
And I just really quick wanted to talk a little
bit about one of the most obvious metaphors or the

(54:30):
whole movie is the chain, you know, having the paper
chains that she's making starting the whole movie off with
the paper chain and showing him throwaway, showing the thief
throwaway a bag full of paper chains. This is a
link in a chain as far as these event goes.
And I always talk about these cycles that are happening,
and I really appreciate it. It's a pretty simple metaphor,

(54:52):
but it's really a nice metaphor. It also really talks
to the whole cycle of abuse and everything. Because one
thing that gets cut out of the film that's also
in the script are the two people that are finding
these flowers and find the blue flowers, and the blue
flowers have I think there are orchids. Maybe maybe they're
orchid thieves.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
The blue flowers have the worms. And that's what the
thief is looking for. Are these blue flowers. The blue
dust that they have tells him that there are worms
in there. And these two people that find these flowers
are a granddaughter and grandmother. And in the script there's
this whole thing of like how they find these flowers

(55:33):
and they get to name the flowers and they what
the young girl is like, oh, we get to name
these flowers because they're you know, like we get we
found them, and she says that she wants to name
the flower after the grandfather, Granddad Walter. The grandmother is like, no,

(55:55):
we shouldn't name him after We should name these flowers
after him. Never says why, but I'm just like, did
he do something bad? Is that like this cycle of abuse?
Like the grandfather did this and did something bad, and
like it's passing through these people. It's very much like
that whole idea of like, if the father's an abuser,
the son's going to be the abuser. Has his son's

(56:16):
going to be the abuser. Because what's the most beautiful
part of this whole movie for me is when she
shoots the sampler, the cycle's over. You know, we are
done now with this whole thing. We are not going
to drown any more pig babies ever again.

Speaker 7 (56:30):
Yeah, and the thief can't continue to do what he's
been doing.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Right, and you see him sadly going through those plants.

Speaker 7 (56:36):
Yeah, it's pretty remarkable too, to like begin on that image.
And yet you know, I think somebody watching it for
the first time may not necessarily pick up on you
know though these are chain links and this has been
a scam that the thief has been doing over and
over again. We don't even know how many times he's
done it, but it's clear that he has. And I
wonder about that in terms of you're saying that the

(56:59):
original script had a lot of dialogue, because this is
kind of the anti prime or Primer has so much
exposition and dialogue and people trying to, you know, explain
their way out of what's happening or at least figure
out or together like collaborate on what's going on. And
here it's kind of, yeah, like the antithesis of that,
where it's basically characters figuring things out without explaining it outright,

(57:24):
and that allows the audience to sort of project themselves
into this experience more. My takeaway has always been, well,
this is about reconstructing your narrative, losing your identity, and
processing trauma, and how all those things sort of interplay
with you throughout your life and how do you come
to terms with that and find your sense of community

(57:46):
In the end, I get the sense of interconnectivity with
everything going on, like, yes, we've all experienced horrific things
in life, and yet we've all experienced wonderful things in
life too, So there is that kind of duality and
the ultimate balance that we get to by the end
of the film. That sort of leaves me more on
a hopeful note than anything else. The visual storytelling here

(58:08):
is just impeccable, because every shot means something. You just
don't know what it is entirely, you know, especially in
a first viewing, this means something.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
We'll think of the shot of the pig pens at
night and the doors are opening, and then cut to
the subway or the train car and the doors are
opening there, and I'm just like, this is amazing, and
it's what two three seconds at most. I mean, the
pace of the editing of this movie is wonderful. It's

(58:40):
also very disorienting, which I think is perfect for this,
that we are cutting to things that we don't necessarily know.
I mean, there's a whole idea of that. You know,
we can talk about editing styles, when we can talk
about Hollywood editing and all this kind of stuff, and
I just think that this editing style, it's been and
we can talk about influence, but it's been up by
a lot of other people, and I don't necessarily think

(59:02):
that they do it as well as this, And even
this probably isn't the origin of this style of editing,
but the way that he disorients us every time he cuts,
and it takes us just it might be a fraction
of a second, but takes us a little bit of
time to get ourselves situated again. And that constant re
evaluation of where am I, what's happening, I'm sure feels

(59:26):
very much like what Chris and Jeff go through every
second of the day, just they still feel completely out
of sorts with us.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
In the audio commentary that's on the Unbrellably ray, the
commentator mentions May and Darren, Oh, yes, editing connection. And
It's been a while since I've dug into her work,
so I couldn't really add to that, but I was
worth bringing up as a connection because thinking back to
what I remember, Yeah, very strikingly similar. But also another film,

(59:58):
The Shout Skoleamowski. The Shout feels like it was a
big influence on this, in both the sound being about
a musician, sound sampler kind of guy, and also the
fact that it's in someone invading their life and taking
over it and controlling and splintering it. That it feels
like that is I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but

(01:00:19):
it was just like, oh, the shout is so all
through upstream color well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
And then John hurt is a composer in that as well.

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, no, good point. But I'm
glad that those two influences came up because I think
like just relying so heavily on like it's very much
like Terrence Maw like kind of got old. I could
see it obviously, but there's more to it than just like, oh,
yeah that's poetic. It's elliptical and you know the editing style.
It's like, oh yeah, that's lots of shots of nature. Yeah,

(01:00:50):
it's kind of surface level stuff to me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
It's also feels like Jeff Nichols Take Shelter, and Jeff
nichols work in general was a big influence on him.
I Reckon takes Shelter, especially given it as the ecological
aspects of dealing with trauma and community and isolation and thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
I'm going to go way out there when it comes
to a potential influence on this as well. All throughout
the entire script, there's a location which is called the
Seruleian Plaza Hotel, and that location keeps coming up and
I don't think you even see it in the movie
at all. And that's where the flower show is. There's

(01:01:30):
because there's a flower show. When they find these things,
they get awarded for having the blue orchids or blue flowers.
And the Cerulian goes through this whole thing. And as
soon as I see the word Serulian, I start thinking
about one of my favorite episodes of The X File,
which was called The Pusher from Season three, episode seventeen,

(01:01:51):
and that was a guy who has a brain tumor.
It's a little man who suddenly gets power and he
wants to become a big man and he can control people,
he can push them, thus the name of the episode.
And there's a wonderful moment in the very first part
of the episode that I just love so much where
the Pusher has been arrested and he's in the back

(01:02:14):
of a police car and he starts to talk to
one of the officers and he just says, that's a
really lovely shade of blue, you.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
Know, Debuty, I just got to say that your uniform
is really the most soothing shade of blue. I'm not
kidding you. I notice those things. It's a sky blue,
very calming, very tranquil. I think the word for that

(01:02:44):
particular shade is Cerulyan, actually Cerulean blue.

Speaker 6 (01:02:50):
Okay, we get it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
It's a nice shade of blue.

Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
Cerulean blue. Cerulian makes me think of the breeze.

Speaker 6 (01:02:59):
Gentle.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Hey, mister Blackwell, put a socket and.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
A gentle.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Gentle basically hypnotizes this police officer to drive in front
of a truck which has a Ceruleian shipping company on it.
So as soon as I see Serulian, and there's mind control,
like he must have been a fan of The X Files.

Speaker 7 (01:03:30):
Definitely, I definitely remember that episode now that you mentioned it,
because I think it even ends with like Skinner and
Russian Roulette.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Right now, it's Molder with that, yeah, okay, And Molder
points the gun at Scully, and you know there's a
one bullet in there somewhere. She pulls a fire alarm,
disrupts the whole thing, and then he shoots the pusher
right in the head, and it would have been the
bullet that he had shot Scully with. Shoots him in

(01:03:57):
the chest, I'm sorry, suits him in the chest, just
like how the same a good shot in the chest.

Speaker 7 (01:04:01):
I don't want to give you more podcast projects, Mike,
but I want to hear you talk X files episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
There have been so many better X files podcasts than
what I could ever do.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
As I was reading some of these materials this morning,
I was like, hmm, I bet somebody has written something
somewhere about Annihilation and Jeff Vandermir's Southern Reached trilogy in
relation to Upstream Color.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
I can see that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Yeah, so yeah, I went to Google. I typed it
in BAM right there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Ah, that's a really good comparison GA.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
That was published in twenty fourteen, and they're so much
there because like the cons that's well. Learn about the
concept of tero terroir. I'm bad at my French terroir,
which is the French wine making term that relates to
how all the factors that influenced the creation of rapes

(01:04:56):
in the soil, how it can differ even you know,
one hundred meters apart art, and it relates to you
that all the things that have happened over time in
that spot, so like, for instance, a great battle happened
there five hundred years ago on one side of the
heel and not the other, and all the blood soaked
into the soil and changed the composition. And obviously that's
the same kind of idea of the upstream color of

(01:05:17):
like what trickles down and altars and changes, and how
you can never know how far back those linkages of
change go. Thanks all the chains and linkages that I'm
stumbling it. So the article I found was by Joshua
Rothman on Jeff Vanderman. It was called the Weird threroaw
but he talks that about Timothy Morton's twenty thirteen called

(01:05:40):
hyper objects. Probably is the same year that ustream color
comes out. Have you heard of hyper objects? I'll give
you this definition from David Tompkins, writing another article in
LA Review of Books. He said that Morton's hyper objects
are events or systems or processes that are too complex.
It's too massively distributed across space and time for humans

(01:06:04):
to get a grip on. Black holes are hyper objects.
Nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium with their deep
time half lives, are hyper objects. Global warming and mass
species extinction are hyper objects. We know we live with
the local effects of these phenomena, but mostly they are
quite literally beyond our ken. In one sense, they are

(01:06:25):
abstractions in another. They are ferociously catastrophically real because they
are so massively distributed in terms of causality and consequence.
They refute or distort our homely notions of time and space.
Is that a description of upstream color or what?

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (01:06:41):
And speaking of that of the umbrella blu ray, there's
something interesting written on the back and I don't know
the source of who wrote this, but it really dives
into the idea of being in an altered state, particularly
when it mentions how correlations have been found between the
parasite as well as OCD, as well as suicide among

(01:07:04):
people with mood disorders, including bipolar disorder. Although there is
a correlation between the parasite and many psychological disorders, the
underlying mechanism is unclear. When it talks about this, it
made me think of toxoplasmosis, which is this crazy parasite
that creates this enzyme that does kind of alter your

(01:07:26):
behavior and like rewiring the production of dopamine in the
brain to where it actually can cause schizophrenia and people.
And oddly enough, it is often found in cat poop
and affects it infects pregnant women. It's not an alarming thing.
That actually happens on a regular basis, Like, don't worry

(01:07:47):
if you own a cat and you're pregnant. Don't think
you're in trouble or in danger or anything.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
But it's just just if you're pregnant and you have
a cat, hopefully your partner is the one that's changing
the litter. There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
You're not going to go down like Tommy and Chainspotting,
It's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Or like Adrian and Rocky. She was lifting up that
big bucket of dog food when she had her near miscarriage,
so thank goodness that didn't happen. I wanted to really
highlight the scene of when the sampler is making the music,
and I love that it becomes a symphony, not just
with him creating the music, but then it's Chris and

(01:08:28):
Jeff are adding to the music. The sound of Chris's
printer as it's going across and printing up blue flowers,
which I found would be fantastic. Also, the sound of
the water that Jeff is running becomes part of that
music as well. And I just love that word cross
cutting between all I mean, again, the editing fucking brilliant

(01:08:52):
for this, and just cross cutting between these things and
doing all of this and creating this song throughout the movie,
and then that the sampler doesn't like it. And once
he do, he doesn't just tear up the music. He
literally just takes it and throws it into the river,
presaging the whole thing that happens to these poor piglets,

(01:09:12):
and the whole idea of like the music, because the
music is really what draws them to him. There's something
that you can't really see very easily. But when he
goes right before this whole sequence starts with this music
that he's creating, he stops at his mailbox a sampler,
and on the mailbox it says king WA Records or

(01:09:34):
king Wa label I think it is. And eventually Jeff
finds that label, he finds all these CDs with that,
and the whole idea of reliving trauma through music. I mean,
sometimes a song is it's as powerful as a smell.
It can take you back to a particular time so easily,

(01:09:57):
and you just start to feel those same feeling. And
using music as this way to connect to the sampler
and to connect to this trauma, I just think that
that's absolutely brilliant. And the script again, sorry to keep
harping on this, but they actually go to a concert.
Like all of these people, they kind of all merge

(01:10:18):
into this concert hall, all of the people that have
their pigs on the Sampler's farm, and the Sampler, after
working on all of his compositions through the rest of
the film, gives a concert at one point, and that's
before they eventually find the farm.

Speaker 7 (01:10:34):
Wow, I would have loved to have seen that scene. No,
that's powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I was sort of having a thought earlier, and that's
kind of brought me back around to it of how
I'm currently in the middle of working on a project
where I'm watching dailies every day, you just seeing the
all the you know, it's from like episode one and
then the shooting five minutes later it gets from episode six,
and how the act of editing brings parts that you

(01:11:01):
shot ninety days ago together with stuff that you spot now.
And so he end up with these two times, two
places connected as a whole of one person who has
gone through so much and there's a different person to
who they were ninety days ago, holding that together as
a single character. And how music what you said there,

(01:11:24):
and how music can transport you, It can transport you
back time and place like decades before, and also how
we're like listening to something that was made so long ago.
But it's also a transformation. It's definitely how it to
present music is presented, and the film is transformative in
that he is taking an object and transforming the sound

(01:11:46):
of the object to create music, and we are seeing
a visualization of music in him doing that. So you've
got this real zigzagging backwards and forwards between different states
and way of being in process. Is all kind of
happening simultaneously. That it's doesn't it's it isn't kind of

(01:12:06):
magical that that literalization, but also you know de.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
Literalization commodification as well, that he's taking something natural, making
it digital, putting it out as a CD, and then
somebody buys that and that becomes the cycle. You know,
he gets more money, he can buy better equipment, he
can make more music, et cetera, et cetera. Like that's
a cycle as well, which is fascinating. I'm talking all

(01:12:32):
about editing, but I have to say one of my
favorite shots in the movie doesn't even have an edit,
and it's when he's going through all of these people's
lives and touching the pigs and then suddenly going to
their lives. One thing that's horrific is how many people
has the thief done this to, because it feels like
a never ending cavalcade of all of these people. There's

(01:12:54):
only so many pigs on this farm, but you're just like,
oh my god, so many people have had their lives
are ruined by the thief. And at one point there's
a guy that comes in. He puts a quarter in
a meter or something, and he moves out of the
way and there's a sampler right behind him. That reveal
always kind of takes my breath away because we keep

(01:13:15):
seeing these ways of like using editing to bring him
to a place he'll be. You know, there's a woman
who's eating and then somebody passes by and then he's
sitting there. There's a guy in a car, and then
we pan over and he's sitting there. That's not a
cut obviously, but there's you know, that pan over and
it's just like, Okay, this is fascinating the way that

(01:13:36):
they're bringing us in and that he's already there. It
feels like when the guy puts that quarter in the meter,
it's just oh, in that whole sequence. And I think
Jimmy mentioned this before with the woman who keeps saying
I love you to her husband, and that the husband
is it his mother, that isn't the ambulance, Like, I
don't know exactly where we come in, because again it

(01:13:58):
feels like we're going back and forth in time. Maybe
that's his wife in the ambulance and maybe and I
think that's what's happening. I think the wife is in
the ambulance and we're with the guy, and we're with
the guy as he is starting to remember. So the
Sampler not only is visiting this guy, but the Sampler
isn't shown in the guy's memories, but he's seeing the

(01:14:21):
guy's memories, and he is experiencing the guy's memories. And
because we see him when it's more present, when it's
the ambulance, when it's the hospital bed, and then it
feels like we're seeing then the memories that this guy
is having as he's sitting there by his wife in
the hospital. And I think that that whole sequence again

(01:14:42):
two characters that we don't know, we've never experienced these
two before. But then when you realize this guy's gone
through all that shit, and here's his wife trying to
reach out to him and she can't make that connection.
She just keeps saying I love you, and he's like
those words don't mean anything anymore. It just breaks you
freaking heart.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
Man.

Speaker 7 (01:15:01):
Yeah, I really do wonder how many victims there were. Like,
it's also interesting that a really hunting shot is when
Chris first comes home after being on the freeway and
she arrives home for the first time, there's like these
silhouettes of people that are just there as she's walking through.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
I thought that too, and I skipped back, and you're wrong.
It's before he awakens on the highway. It's actually, Yeah,
when you were saying for that you think that she's
come out of it, there's actually a second time when
you think that she's come out of it, as that
where she's in her house and she closes an external
door and starts to move through it, and there's all

(01:15:45):
these people standing in the house looking outwards from the house,
and she doesn't make I look at them or acknowledge
them or anything. She moves through and she goes and
runs the water in the bathroom sink and then kind
of like starts to sort of go huh. And as
she moves out and then she snat wakes up and
she's in the car, so it's yeah, I thought the

(01:16:07):
same thing. I thought, Oh this is and it's like no,
it's actually their editing is like a big chicks you
so beautifully in a couple of places. There are a
lot of people in that house. It certainly was a
lot of people that have been affected by this.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
I mean when they make love the first time and
they're in the pig pen in the sky and waking
up in the sty and just that image of those
beautiful clean white sheets amongst the mud, and they're like, okay,
they are the pigs, right then they are the ones
that are having the sex and conceiving the babies, and

(01:16:41):
just that tie between the pigs and the people just
becomes this really beautiful thing, especially towards the end when
you see her with that piglet and it's like she
finally has her baby and it's not hers, you know,
it's got to be one of the other pigs because
she can't conceive, but it's basically it's her pigs baby
and that becomes her baby, which I just I think

(01:17:03):
that's wonderful and just such a nice way of giving
her some closure to this, because otherwise there's nothing. I mean,
just kind of going back to the whole psychology angle
of it again, those rituals that they do that they
don't even know that they're doing, and it takes a
while for them to kind of awake to them. And

(01:17:25):
it feels very much like therapy, like where you're just
talking about this bad behavior, things that are going on
in your life, and it takes another person to kind
of push you into that and say like, hey, listen,
there's a pattern going on here, like you picking out
of all the blue Eminem's out of your cup, you
with this huge thing of straws and making chains out

(01:17:45):
of the paper, her even knitting stuff just like well
she knitted for the thief and now here she is
knitting on the train. But this whole thing of her
throwing out rocks into the pool and then die and
quoting from Walden and she's basically re reading Walden to

(01:18:06):
herself as she's doing this. And I love when he
starts to recognize Jeff Reckne, He's almost the therapist in
that scene where he starts to recognize what she's doing
and then starts to read along with her, and he's
reading and she'll pop up and finish the line kind
of thing. And for the longest time, I'm just like,
is she aware of this? Is she aware of him

(01:18:26):
that he's even standing there? Is he Is he just
witnessing her reliving this trauma with these stones and going
down and picking up these stones putting them onto the
side of the pool. Is that's what's going on? Or
is she aware? And it feels like towards the end
she starts to gain awareness, and that's again another strength,
and finally it's like, Okay, we're starting to have more

(01:18:47):
of a breakthrough.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
I think the significance of this story within the world
it peaks is that these are the first two that
have come across each other, that no other victims have
encountered their other and become aware of the other. And
I think that partly because of how important the being

(01:19:10):
seen aspect is. That when she's moving through the house
and we can see all these people there, but she
doesn't see them, and then when she looks at the
sampler and he is seen, it changes things. And so
I think there is something significant to that in the
not experiencing something in isolation that being seen by a

(01:19:31):
person who has a similar experience or identical experience allows
something to shift, that you're not stuck in that kind
of loop. And also that that's why it does, even
after so many horrific things happen in this film, that
it ends feeling incredibly positive and optimistic and beautiful because

(01:19:55):
the ending is a refutation of disconnection, Like it refew
us is that we are disconnected. It refuses the systems
and everything that pulls us apart and says that no,
it doesn't matter if we destroy the planet or we
do this or we do that. It's like no, at
the end of it is like we are connected. I'm
connected to this animal, I am connected to this earth,

(01:20:17):
and that has meaning, and that is It's just incredibly
powerful And it doesn't without saying it, which means it
really hits that something low down like deep psychological level.
They actually really feel it, and that's super powerful.

Speaker 7 (01:20:33):
Yeah, for me, it always feels like it ends on
a hopeful note, show showcasing the possibility of resilience, you know,
just sort of realizing, yeah, I've gone through all this
trauma and all these horrible things, but there's still a
sense of interconnectivity with everyone and everything. I mean, you know,

(01:20:57):
it's that final image always brings tears to my eyes
because it does make me think of like the kind
of connection I have with my cat. You know, like,
despite war and capitalism and the hordes of selfish people
that exist in the world, I can come home and
almost like experience something very pure about like the kind
of love not just a cat, any animal can have

(01:21:19):
with their owner. It's just you know, they look at
you and they just know there's love there, and there's
love for each other. And I mean, I imagine that
could happen to me too, if I were living on
a farm with a lot of little piglets around, like
I would just feel a little more centered and hopeful
and just like grateful that all these these animals are

(01:21:40):
not out like to steal my money. Well, they're just
here to survive and eat and live. I certainly have
this awareness all the time that the outside world is
falling apart, and that human beings are often you know,
selfish and kind of nasty, but there's there is a
sense of unconditional love and a feeling of we're not

(01:22:03):
all alone and that we can get through it together.
And that's kind of the note that the movie ends
on for me, even though again, like a lot of
people sort of hang on, you know, the fact they're like, oh,
is this opaque? Is this ambiguous? I feel like it's
about overcoming what you've been through and realizing that you
can get through it in the right ways, hopefully with

(01:22:24):
the right people. And that's kind of when all those
victims come together. It feels like a sense of community
that I think a lot of people want out of
life in the end, find like minded people who understand
where you're coming from.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Well, I like what you had to say, Ben, as
far as these two might be the first two who
have ever found each other, who have recognized the trauma
in each other, And I wonder if I can relate
it to music, as far as those two together are stronger,
because it's like when you play two notes together, you know,
it takes three to make a chord, but they're forming

(01:22:58):
something a little bit wronger together. Now when they do
that thing, whether they're saying is it a left turn
or a right turn to get back out to the farm,
they have that togetherness. They have the strength of their
decisions being made together rather than just one person trying
to feel their way along in the metaphorical dark. And

(01:23:21):
I think that's also when all of those people show
up at the farm. Now it becomes a symphony. Now
we have so many notes. Now we have all of
these people who have the same communal and I think
that word is very important when it comes to living
out a farm. They have that communal aspect. And now
they all come together. They repaint the fences, they fix

(01:23:43):
up the farm. They all bring this togetherness. Now they
all care for these pigs together. Now they all have
their other halves that they're reunited with. I like what
you're saying to Jim as far as that unconditional love,
and it just so reminds me of like people being
split apart and that headwords wig song, right, like we

(01:24:04):
had two sets of arm, two sets of legs, you know,
one giant head with faces on either side, and then
we were torn asunder by the gods. And now you're
always looking for that other half of yourself. It feels
like they are all coming together as a whole as
that one big beast at the end of it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:23):
And I think it's very significant that Chris and Jeff
aren't presented ever as a whole. That the other half
is the pigs that they find. And at the end,
we don't end with Jeff and Chris and they are
two pigs to get them like a big happy family.
We end with Chris and her pig. It's it's a

(01:24:44):
singular journey to find the whole, singular the other half.
That reconnection happens there and that it isn't shared necessarily
but together, as you said, like that communal experience that
each of them together is finding their holes which allows
them to then hopefully come together as a larger hole.

Speaker 7 (01:25:05):
Oh, I'm grateful that we had this communal experience to
share our love of this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
It doesn't get better than this for me when it
comes to just all of the elements talking to each
other and just really you know, I wrote in my
notes yesterday when I'm talking about the cross cutting and
when Nora finally looks up and sees the sampler, I wrote,
I'm fucking giddy, you know, And that's how I feel.

(01:25:31):
I feel giddy when I watch this movie because it
is just such a cinematic experience where I'm just like,
look at how all of these elements come together to
tell me this story to take me someplace else. That
weird sensation that you get when you're watching this when
Caruth has been playing music throughout so much of this
and then I'll stop the music and you just feel

(01:25:52):
this absence. Right, it's just like you just broke me
out of this hypnotic spelled because it feels like this movie.
I said before, like people when they talk about this movie,
they talk about how it washes over you. I think
it's that music and that editing style that literally hypnotizes
you as you're watching it, because you get the drone
and you get the little pieces being added to the drone,

(01:26:14):
and we'll change tempo a little bit here and there.
But the edit style also keeps you involved in that.
When he'll stop that music, you're just like whoa. He's
like suddenly shocked out of it, and you're almost like, no,
bring back the music, bring back that feeling. And then
he'll slowly start to reintroduce it again, and it's just like,
this is great. I'm so happy when I watched this film,

(01:26:35):
even though it's super traumatic, you know, like that we
talked about the trauma at the beginning. I talked about
how it's so horrific at the beginning, and then the
loss of the pigs is another horrific. I mean it
feels like it feels like a setback, right, like when
you think that you're starting to get better and suddenly
something will trigger you and you suddenly start to feel

(01:26:55):
really awful again. And sometimes, like you were saying, Jim,
for no reason, you're having this horrible day and you're
really angry or you're really upset, you're really confused, and
you're like, where is this coming from? And that's the feeling.
It feels like there could be something happening, you know,
so far away that is making me feel this way.
You have to own that, but it's just like, what

(01:27:17):
is happening to me? It's that setback. And then finally
we start to get back on our feet and we
take charge of things. And like I said, when she
makes eye contact with the sampler and you're just like
she has taken control of her situation, it's such a
feeling of elation that comes over me. And a lot
of that elation comes from look at how beautifully this

(01:27:40):
film has been put together.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
And that music changes as soon as they stop being lost.
Once the music becomes so active and shift speed. It
stops being wind chimy, like blown awaund around the way
kind of sounds. It's like suddenly like don't like a heartbeat, don't, don't,
don't don't. And they're like, oh, they have focused, they
have mating, they have purpose, they like getting on with

(01:28:06):
it and things are going to get better. And it's like, yeah,
it's such a powerful shift. When that last chunk of
music kicks in.

Speaker 7 (01:28:14):
I always get goosebumps. And it's now my ring tone.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
Which she sees the flower underwater and keeps grabbing it,
and every time she grabs that, she gets new flashes,
like new stuff is coming back to her. How liberating
is that.

Speaker 7 (01:28:28):
I don't want to end on this note, but I'm
just so mad that chink Ruth turned out to be.
I watched this and I'm like, God, damn it, why
do you have to be in a hatch? Because this
is only your second movie, and I want I wanted more.
I really did, like he had. I believe the Modern
Ocean was a script that he it might be out there,
isn't it, Mike? I think it is.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
I think it is. I didn't find it when I
was doing my research, but yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.

Speaker 7 (01:28:53):
People were saying like that was like one of the
best scripts they ever read, like the actors who were
gonna sign Iron for it, but for whatever reason, it
didn't turn out to be. And it's just really sad
that we'll probably never have another Chain career movie. But
I'm glad we have this one.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
Out on archive dot org, so feel free to grab it,
and I think you can probably even download the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
I'm pretty okay with this being it. Like I said,
if this feels like it's such fertile soil, it doesn't
feel like an end. And given that he fucked up
things in his own life, I'm fine with him not
having had the chance to fuck up his filmography.

Speaker 2 (01:29:34):
Like that band that puts out the one perfect album
and then breaks up.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
Yeah, like it would be amazing. You know, it'd be
fantastic to have Kurt here, or he could have gone
and become a Las Vegas loungeinger. You never know. It's this,
As I said, this is such rich, fertile soil. And
you can just even just a brief skim over what
people have written and thought about this. It's clearly like
people have like sown some seeds in this soil and
it's just grown for them, and that just is beautiful,

(01:30:01):
and that is more than you could ever hope for
with one film, let alone a whole filmography. So it's like, yeah,
it sucks, but also like it doesn't feel final or hopeless.
You know, there's so much here that we'll keep growing
and expanding in people's hearts and minds and helping them
to like find their path in their art and maybe

(01:30:24):
even their own life and in the world. And I
think that's the most important, powerful thing we can take
away from it. And it's important to remember all those
other aspects and as I said, think of denying them,
deny as part of what this film is about. But
the positive is where it ends, and that is a
beautiful positive note that we can keep close to our

(01:30:46):
hearts forever.

Speaker 7 (01:30:48):
Well said, Now that's the final note you want to
end on.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
And with that, we're going to take a break and
play a preview for next week's show. Right after these
brief messages, return of.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
The Jedi from the desert fortress of Java the hut
Ji after the death Star.

Speaker 1 (01:31:05):
Of the Galactic Empire, to the forest city of the Ewoks.

Speaker 3 (01:31:12):
This is the climactic chapter in the Star Wars saga
Remember the Force, great choice in a triumph Return of
the Jedi rated PG, now playing at a theater in
your galaxy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26):
That's where we'll be back next week with a very
obscure film called Return of the is a gd jed
JEDDI yeah, I think that's great. Until then, I want
to thank my co host Ben and Jim. So Ben,
what's been keeping you busy?

Speaker 6 (01:31:40):
Sir?

Speaker 1 (01:31:41):
Just working away on Apple TVs. The Dispatcher. God knows
when will turn up, but it looks like it's going
to be pretty good. Bit of Australian like gothic crime,
something else and just pottering away in my letter box
as usual. You can find me on letter Box to
Dissolve Pet and I'm on Blue Sky now, so you
can go and say that I'm like rejoining the social

(01:32:02):
media world and establishing my worm connections. Dissolved pat On
Blease guy as well.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):
Very cool and Jim, how about yourself?

Speaker 7 (01:32:10):
Well, I wear many hats.

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
But in addition to.

Speaker 7 (01:32:14):
Continuing to work on a documentary about mental health and
movies that I would like to get done within the year,
we'll see I mainly host a monthly podcast called Director's Club,
which is now over on substack, where I kind of
keep everything readily available, so my reviews, by writing music,
pretty much all things me is now at directors Club

(01:32:36):
dot substack dot com, or you can find me on
letterbox and occasionally on Blue Sky and Instagram under Jim Lanskowski.

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
Thanks Mike, thank you well, Thank you both so much
for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening.
If you want to hear more of Meshing off my Mouth,
check out some of the other shows that I work on.
They are all available at weirdingweightmedia dot com. Thanks especially
to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
visit patreon dot com. Comp Slash, Projection Booth and Jim
thank you for joining or rejoining today. Appreciate that every

(01:33:05):
donation may get help some Projection Booth take over the world.

Speaker 5 (01:34:29):
S The

Speaker 7 (01:37:06):
Men w

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