Page - 30 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

Upstream Color: Synaesthetic Spiritual Connections “Close your eyes.”40 That these are the first words of dialogue voiced in Upstream Color is not insignif- icant. Paradoxical in its invitation (what audience would close their eyes to watch a film?), it suggests that the film’s strengths are multisensory, requiring what Vivian Sobchack calls a “synaesthetic” engagement with the film’s body.41 With its strong emphasis on the auditory – it received a special award at the Sundance Film Festival for its accomplishments in sound design – the film has a structure best described as symphonic, with a musicality to the editing rhythms which provide coherence to the disparate images and disjointed sense of time.42 Beyond the apt comparisons to another metaphysical 2013 sci-fi film, Coherence (James Ward Byrkit, US/GB 2013), imagine that Terrence Malick made a film based on a Hayao Miyazaki story, and you may have a glimpse into Shane Carruth’s modus operandi.43 While Upstream Color has an elliptical and fractured narrative akin to Primer, a perceptive viewer/hearer can eventually puzzle together the pieces of the emplotted events, even if the sig- nificance and plausibility of those events remain opaque and open to interpretation. A critical summary of the film’s narrative reveals its parabolic dynamic. The opening shot is of trash bags filled with intertwined paper chains being car- ried towards a garbage dumpster. The montage of subsequent shots over the next 40 Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, US 2013), 00:02:30. 41 Sobchack 1992, 129–140. 42 For an excellent analysis of Upstream Color’s distinct sound design, see Kickasola 2013. 43 Mayward 2013. Fig. 4: “They could be starlings.” Film still, Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, US 2013), © ERBP Film, 01:00:07. Parabolic Transcendence in Time and Narrative | 29www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 17–36