You need what no critic has offered in deciding whether to take the trouble to see this perplexing film. It is utterly incomprehensible unless you know something about Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden, or Life in The Woods. The book is apparently a notoriously difficult read: part memoir, transcendentalist tract, social theory, paean to self-sufficiency.

If the challenge of the book is too daunting, at least skim Wikipedia: this will offer a conceptual framework within which it may be possible to draw some enlightenment or at least satisfaction from, for me, an indulgent, perversely obscure film.

It may be you’ll decide, unlike me, that this is worth the effort. In this respect it is worth quoting a reference to Walden from Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989).

"I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"

This suggests that there may be a worthwhile, coherent theme underlying Upstream Colour. For me there could be, but isn’t.

If I could bring myself to watch Upstream Colour again, which I can’t, it is probably true that one might detect some coherence, an intelligible theme. If you are attracted by the Noble Savage, Self-reliance, back-to-nature perspective it may be that you will share what seems to me to be the exaggerated acclaim accorded to this movie.

Not for me though. Life’s too short.

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