Baffling. Extraordinary. Pigs. Barely any dialogue. Beautiful looking. Directed by Shane Carruth (Primer), It's very challenging - so much so that I'm not even sure repeat viewings will shed any more light on it. It's definitely one for cinema purists who like to watch cerebral movies. In that respect it's more of an experience than a movie aligned with Terence Malick and Darren Aronofsky material. What's it about? The cycle of life? genetics? religion? morality? ethics? Probably all these things. What's clear is that Shane Carruth operates on a level that is different to most of us!

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

I watched this movie in a paid streaming service, hence I had the chance to watch it again but I didn't. I felt so awful after watching it, for not being able to understand the purpose of this movie or what it means. I spent sometime reading shared thoughts of people here and there about what the movie could mean to them and I found that it is totally hard to get a reasonable single conclusive meaning for this piece.I originally gave the movie 1 out of 10 as I couldn't enjoy it and it didn't reach me for obvious reason, I was in hurry. Even though I connected the dots (I understood some how what it is on the outside!!) after watching the first quarter of this movie but it kept stretching for me and that made me lose the point of it.It is a very slow presentation of science fictional concept, the rest is merely a philosophical and artistic presentations. Philosophical and artistic presentations that can make people who watch this movie get confused about it like I was. The movie does not have parts repeated but chapters presented, it is a whole intact story of when the 'concept' suggested happen, what impact 'we' have on us.I give this movie 3 out of 10 for its ability to bring in a unique views on science fiction movie genre.

What did I just watch? Please, someone tell me because I have no idea. I can't remember being more clueless after watching a 90 minute movie. This movie was so random. Random characters, random plot, random scenes, random music, random dialog. There was nothing cohesive or logical about this movie.It started off with so much promise. A guy drugs a woman and the drug makes this woman do his bidding by mere suggestions. Eventually he is out of the picture never to be seen again until the very end. She carries on with her life and that part of the movie is dropped entirely--as if it never happened.The movie continues to jump from scene to scene adding characters along the way with absolutely no introduction and zero character development. We know nothing about the characters and we learn nothing about the characters which makes their strange actions and behavior more bewildering.And God forbid there be any dialog to help us understand. It's like the movie was on a word budget. For a minute I thought they decided to switch it to a silent film. They (meaning Shane Carruth, writer, producer, director) opted to use nerve wracking musical chords and various imagery in order to convey the story. I'm sorry but I don't speak musical notes, I speak English.Shane went for the deep, esoteric, and artsy. I got the feeling that this movie was for some elite and secretive group that I wasn't a part of. Whatever message was being conveyed, I missed it. I didn't barely miss it as in the bus just left a minute ago. I missed like Shaq misses free throws... I was no where near understanding this. So this movie was for the cool kids, I get it. I'm not part of the "in" crowd. Fine with me, I'd much rather be watching a movie with a real script, a real story and comprehensible dialog.