Why are people confused? (spoilers) - Upstream Color (2013) Discussion

[–] cbnspanky2 12 years ago

Yep, the story was pretty straight forward to me too. I just thought it was an agonizingly boring story. I really wanted to like it, like I did Primer, but it felt like an extended film school project gone awry.

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[–] Necrometer 12 years ago

Anyone paying strict attention should be able to piece together the life cycle you described. For some, that was challenging because a lot of other information was presented as having similar or greater importance than a lot of the elements of the life cycle. For example, Kris and Jeff spend a lot of screen time reciting Walden in/near a swimming pool, which tells us almost nothing about the life cycle. People are accustomed to having the plot spoon fed to them, so this movie's subtle approach lost some viewers. I didn't find it to be problematic, but I can understand why some would.

And even though you're right about the core life cycle that's just one part of the movie, and one that was made quite clear. How did the Sampler tune into the lives of those tethered to pigs? Was he aware of the harm he brought to Kris when he removed her pig's litter? Why did Kris feel compelled to remove stones from the bottom of the pool? Did Jeff ever realize that his past involved an event similar to the one Kris suffered? Did he actually have a similar time of being manipulated? I don't think these elements were clearly explained, so some confusion will remain even in those who picked up the mechanics of the life cycle.

HAIL TO THE CHIMP! http://i35.tinypic.com/1zoxa4m.gif

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[–] new-wave 10 years ago

On the Walden point: my understanding is that Kris memorized Walden as part of the control process by the Thief - she would transcribe the text and turn the paper into paper chains. Almost a meth-like thing going on there. There seemed to be other repetitive exercises going on with the Thief while he was robbing her, like something with counting poker chips.

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[–] mattstevens 12 years ago

It is by no means clear cut. While I agree with your plot layout, certain elements are completely unexplained.

The Sound engineer for one. His background, why and what he is doing, how he can enter into the subconscious of the victims... It's all a big fat WTF?

And hey, I liked the film. Especially the technical aspects. Lighting, camera work, sound and music are all exceptional. But it's overly cerebral.

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[–] emvan 12 years ago

With all due respect, "overly cerebral" is a statement about your reaction to the movie, not to the movie. A movie can be in or out of focus, and it can have a bright or muted color palette ... but being too cerebral, not cerebral enough, or too fast-paced, or too slow -- those are qualities that a movie cannot possibly have. They all need to have "for me" appended to them, and as soon as you add "for me" you get different evaluations, sometimes dramatically so.

Given the huge glut of movies that offer no intellectual engagement whatsoever, it's hard to throw stones at a movie this challenging.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

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[–] mattstevens 12 years ago

Well excuse me for speaking my mind. How terrible it is for you that your opinion is not God-like.

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[–] emvan 12 years ago

Way to miss the point completely. I was just pointing out that you stated your opinion (personal reaction) as a fact. ("With all due respect" was not intended to be sarcastic. Your opinion / personal reaction is as valid as mine. But it is an opinion.) I, in fact, didn't state much of an opinion at all, just pointed out that these things are opinions and not facts.

So much for trying to improve the quality of on-line discourse. But if everyone realized this and consistently thought and talked about their personal reaction to the film as opposed to trying to impose that reaction on the film as if it were part of the film, discussions here would be vastly better. And this approach of course is precisely what separated Roger Ebert from almost all of his peers.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

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[–] tyler123456 12 years ago

Emvan - all comments made on any forum are of the opinion of the poster. It would be folly to think that the poster intended their comments to be fact.

I can't speak for him, but when I read mattstevens post it is implied that his comments are his opinion - he shouldn't have to put "in my opinion" at the front and end of every sentence. If he thinks that film is "too cerebral" then that is his opinion and I respect him for that, and for making a positive contribution.

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[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] sean_pak215 12 years ago

Emvan, what an excellent reply (in my opinion, of course). I agree completely.

You're right that "too cerebral" is a meaningless criticism. There needs to be more explanation, or a more concrete complaint. What does "too cerebral" mean, when other films which are held in higher estimation (Solaris, Stalker, 2001, The Tree of Life, much of the work of Bergman and Dreyer) are, I think, far more cerebral than Upstream Color.

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[–] caldwelljt-671-213322 12 years ago

It's irrefutable and absolutely fact (in my opinion) that this thread is:
1. Tragically long
2. Painfully smart
3. Detrimentally vague
4. And by far too spicy for anyone's taste

</sarcasm>

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[–] emvan 12 years ago

I laughed. Even though you had mismatched phony HTML tags.

Someday someone will write software that will grab all of the posts on all the IMDB boards, do a lexical analysis, assign various parameters to that data, and attempt to correlate the parameters to things like B/O results versus Rotten Tomato score. If this happens soon enough, this movie will be at one end and the next Transformers movie will be near the other. </ex-psych grad student>

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

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[–] chuck-526 10 years ago

</sarcasm>

...mismatched phony HTML tags.

Sorta... The machine-specific OS on the old DEC VAX used a whole lot of brackets. To poke gentle fun at VAXen, and to get across a richer meaning in just a few letters (kinda like emoticons:-), it was common in the eighties for computer nerds to write things like:

hoo hoo hoo
<set irony on>
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
<set irony off>
bletch

I suspect this is a descendant.

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[–] The_Fiction 12 years ago

"The Sound engineer for one. His background, why and what he is doing, how he can enter into the subconscious of the victims... It's all a big fat WTF? "

Remember speakers he placed face down on the ground? The sound he was playing on those attracts the recently infected people to come to him so he can take their worms out.

He was experimenting with different sounds to find the right one.

This is also connected to Kris' obsession with the low rumbling noise her pipes make, which she describes as "low but high."

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[–] film_ophile 12 years ago

Help me w/ this plse: why was he taking out their worms?(and why had they been put into people in the first place?) and why was he throwing away the baby pigs?
Shane Carruth says that the pigs are connected to the humans(through the 'transplant' of whatever it was)but can you remember visual examples of that connection ?(I must have missed every single one.)Thx much.

The way to have what we want
Is to share what we have.

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[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 12 years ago

Read the posts here and some of the articles linked to, then see the film again, and things should make more sense. Note that for many/most of us, a second viewing wasn't required to get the basic idea (not that there aren't good reasons to view it multiple times to see more subtle details), so I don't want to hear from the "if you have to see it more than once, then they failed" crowd. Bottom line is that it can be confusing for those not expecting a story to be told in such a unique fashion.

Help me w/ this plse: why was he taking out their worms?(and why had they been put into people in the first place?)

It was part of the parasites' life-cycle and he was aware of what would occur after he transferred the worm. Carruth showed this to the audience not in dialog, but in visual scenes. You would see the farmer among the pigs one moment, then you would see him in the room with Kris or Jeff the next moment. He was able to study them through the connections that the pigs had with the former human host of the worm.

and why was he throwing away the baby pigs?

I think the main thing is that he was aware that the piglets played a part in the life-cycle of the parasite. That is, they would flow down the stream, decompose, provide the blue colored ingredient that led to the particular production of the blue orchid, which would be harvested by the hikers and then sold at a nursery. Those orchids would then be purchased by The Thief, who would take out the parasite to use for drugging and hypnotizing suspects.

Shane Carruth says that the pigs are connected to the humans(through the 'transplant' of whatever it was)but can you remember visual examples of that connection ?(I must have missed every single one.)

Yes, plenty. This is another example of the Carruth's subtle film-making and editing by David Lowery. On second viewing, note how the scenes shift from the human former-host to the pig current-host. Again, this connection is shown many times visually, without dialog. One can see that if you were expecting spoken-word to explain these things and it didn't come, then you could be confused. Now that you know this, a second viewing should make more sense.

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[–] cottonarboretum 12 years ago

well firstly, I do appreciate your taking the time to explain all this complexity. And it seems I will have to see it again, but dvd is how I will do it and that's gonna be awhile.
--In the sundance youtube of S C's Q and A, he says that he liked the idea that each of the points on the triangle- the thief, collector, and harvester- did not know of each other. but your first answer seems to differ.

--<He was able to study them...>
'them' is kris and jeff?

-- while I was aware that the pigs were on the screen, with the exception of the pig coming through a passageway/shute I never saw them do anything that was reflected in the actions of kris and jeff. But you did, and often?

-- and lastly, SC, in various interviews, has referred to the characters losing their selves and having to reinvent their own personal narratives. I don't get this. Were we supposed to think they had amnesia about their pre-abduction lives?

--(iirc) the actress said that, for her, the film was about profound personal loss. Does that ring true for you as well?

thank you again for all your generosity of spirit here.

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[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 12 years ago

In the sundance youtube of S C's Q and A, he says that he liked the idea that each of the points on the triangle- the thief, collector, and harvester- did not know of each other. but your first answer seems to differ.

Okay, first off, we have to make some assumptions. And I'm willing to be corrected.

But I didn't saw that the thief, collector, and harvester knew of each other. I did say that the harvester was aware of the life-cycle of the parasite, but that is really just another assumption. To me, he must be aware of it at some level, or he wouldn't have put the speakers to the ground, transferred the worm, etc. But I don't really know. I don't even want to guess how he stumbled on to the process; that's not what the film is about.

--<He was able to study them...>
'them' is kris and jeff?

Yes. And I'm not sure that 'study' is really the best term.

while I was aware that the pigs were on the screen, with the exception of the pig coming through a passageway/shute I never saw them do anything that was reflected in the actions of kris and jeff. But you did, and often?

Yes, a few times. One big one was that when Kris's pig got pregnant, Kris thought that she was pregnant. Another is when the father pig was removed temporarily from the mother pig, and piglets were separated from the mother pig permanently, both Kris and Jeff reacted at the same time.

-- and lastly, SC, in various interviews, has referred to the characters losing their selves and having to reinvent their own personal narratives. I don't get this. Were we supposed to think they had amnesia about their pre-abduction lives?

Amnesia: When we have to take physical therapy (like after a stroke or car accident), we probably didn't forget that we were once able to do these things without said therapy, but we do now do to the incident that took away our abilities to do what ever it was that we lost.

Their connections to the pigs via the parasite didn't seem to go away. I guess that "reinvent" means that armed with the knowledge of what had been done to them, they move forward with their new head space ... and taking care of the pigs was a part of that.

--(iirc) the actress said that, for her, the film was about profound personal loss. Does that ring true for you as well?

That's fine for her to feel that. Perhaps it reflects upon a loss she experienced in her life. The character lost a few things besides her career and all of the life she had spent years building up, as well as the knowledge that she could never bear children.

It can mean something different for everyone. For me, it could mean losing control of your actions, decisions, and thought processes, something I've come close to experiencing. To wake up from a dream to discover what you had been up to, what you believed you heard and said not being reality/the truth, your personal narrative being ... poisoned.

Ah, enough of that. I've still have only only seen this once and I'll think about it all again when I get the Bluray.

Say, you're not actually Shane Carruth out here to test fans, are you?!

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[–] ramsaylanier 12 years ago

Speaking on that last point re: personal loss...I was actually getting that exact feeling when they started having the dialogue about who really experienced the pool drowning incident as a child. It seems that as Kris and Jeef were individually connected to their own pig, they were also having some shared experiences and connected to each other. In doing so, their own past ('pre-infected') realities blurred causing them to lose part of their human experience. Its one of the most beautiful and poignant ways I have been brought to this emotion in a while. Maybe I misunderstood it, but I felt it just the same.

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[–] ramsaylanier 12 years ago

That being said, I really didn't understand that inclusion of the scene between the husband and wife in the middle of the movie where he kept walking out the door, she kept saying that she would try harder, and him saying that "those are just words." I understood that portion by itself, but I struggled to make the connection to the rest of the movie.

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[–] HereItIsYourMomentOfZen 12 years ago

I assume it was a short glimpse into another one of the test subjects/victims lives, cruelly ending in attempted suicide and the few minutes before that happened being relived by the husband.The connection of that to the rest of the film is not important.

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[–] george-napper 11 years ago

Thank you! That was the one thing I was confused about!!! Now I feel like I have a more complete grasp of the film. You just made my day. :)

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[–] afdrucifer 12 years ago

I took The Sampler to be God.

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[–] dogstarman1 12 years ago

Caruth said this which clarifies a lot I think.

"I’m from Dallas, which is a very conservative place. I come to L.A., which obviously isn’t, and I go to New York, which isn’t, for the most part. And so, I hear both sides of almost every topic. And more times than not, it seems like people, once they’ve aligned themselves to a thought, it’s no longer about objectively figuring out whether it logically adds up anymore. It’s more about getting the talking points from [other members of your] group. Anyway, that’s probably too deep into this, but it’s the idea of people forming identities based on the things they find around themselves, [rather] than critically getting to what they believe is true or not true. I find that really interesting.

What I wanted to do was have a story where I break some people apart and make them have to figure it out all over again — what it is that they are, how they see themselves and how they behave. They’re going to wake up — whatever “wake up” means — in a ruin of some kind, and they’re going to have to understand or explain to themselves what happened to them. That was sort of the kernel of it. I wanted to explore the concept of trying to recognize that you’re in a narrative, one that you may have made up yourself, or one that was [impressed] on you from an outside force. Thematically, this is everything in the film for me. And then you have a potential romance in the midst of it all, and I found that incredibly compelling. I think I had The Hustler on repeat last year for months. That’s where it comes from, the romantic possibility that exists when everything has been stripped away. I don’t know a better premise for a love story that that.

And then, I needed this mythical cycle to be happening around them. They’re not aware of it, because if they are, then that changes everything. Then they know that their story is affected by it. I wanted these mythical elements to be there, but that [the two central characters] not touch them. Once I knew that, then it’s like you get to play with these things. You’ve got a Thief, you’ve got a Sampler and you’ve got the Orchid Mother and Daughter as the three points of this continuing cycle’s triangle. The Thief is clearly a pretty negative force, for the most part. The Orchid Mother and Daughter don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just cogs in the machine. They’re completely benign. And then, you’ve got The Sampler, who is a complete unknown hanging in the middle, this character we can read into. Is he just observing, or is he gaining something from his observance? Is he saving people from this worm that is constricting and controlling them? Or, is he just using this device to grow his own fishbowl full of emotional experiences? I’m trying here not to talk about God; it’s like, that is what we’re talking about. There is an offscreen force that we attribute things to that we can’t explain. Anyways, that’s way too many words, but that’s where that story came from."

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[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 12 years ago

And then you have a potential romance in the midst of it all, and I found that incredibly compelling. I think I had The Hustler on repeat last year for months. That’s where it comes from, the romantic possibility that exists when everything has been stripped away. I don’t know a better premise for a love story that that.

The Hustler?

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[–] budarc 12 years ago

Wow. I didn't get any of that from this movie. This film tells anything but a "clear story."

Okay, so it's about pigs and people who are eternally connected and don't have free will. That still doesn't make it in any way a good movie.

But thank you for the explanation. I sincerely appreciate it.

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[–] Necrometer 12 years ago

Okay, so it's about pigs and people who are eternally connected and don't have free will.

Do you really believe the characters lack free will? Exactly how "free" is your own will? How many times have you done something that nobody could have predicted? Don't you find that there are a lot of intangible forces constraining your actions? Not in a specific way, but in a way that means there are limits to the "free" nature of your will. I think this narrative is exploring such themes.

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[–] budarc 12 years ago

I was simply parroting the OP's words. So you're saying this film is an allegory on the fact that people don't have free will? That's what initially confused me, and I never fully understood the connection between the pigs either, which muddled my opinion further. In the end, the unconventional narrative simply does not appeal to me, in the same way I discarded To The Wonder after I first saw it. It tries too hard to be elusive and intangible and there's just not enough substance to contain it. But maybe that's just me.

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[–] novimovieman 12 years ago

Free will exists within a set of choices one creates to solve a problem, make a decision or create something, etc. One does not have to create something completely unique to exhibit free will. I studied with Dr. Torrence, the world's leader in creativity, and later Dr. Renzulli after Torrence passed away and we discussed free will frequently as it pertained to creativity. The new age 'redefiner' types want to make it appear that unless we come up with a completely new solution that is not already in the circuitry of our brain and the expanse of our experience then it is not free will. I disagree. Free will and creativity go hand in hand. You use divergent thinking to create a list of possible outcomes then filter that list through a mesh of realistic and successful convergent choices and what you have remaining is the basis for free will.

<Psychologically speaking homophobia is an extreme fear of two or more identical objects.>

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[–] novimovieman 12 years ago

The more the questioners of your post drill down into your explanation of the movie the more assumptive your explanation becomes rendering the meanings and interpretations you derived personal at best and possible faulty for some other viewer. Thus your definitive explanation of what is occurring in this movie is just the opposite, irrelevant.

<Psychologically speaking homophobia is an extreme fear of two or more identical objects.>

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[–] ObsessedMovieLover 12 years ago

I completely agree! but this thread has been extremely interesting for me to read. I've also been rewatching the film with different people's perspectives from this thread in mind and it's made it all the more interesting.
I guess I was just so certain of my interpretation that I didn't really see any other (just like the poster who talked about Carruth and what he had to say about people and the way they stick to their opinions no matter what).

Signatures are impossible.

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[–] john-mahananda 12 years ago

"They find the pig farm, she kills the man who was herding the pigs and not allowing them free will."

Where do you get the "free will" part? Not one organism in this movie has free will...

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[–] john-mahananda 12 years ago

At the level of surface plot, OK, you have a point. But you're interpreting at a very low threshold.

E.g.,

Why is Kris the only human who can perceive The Sampler in his astral form?

Why are Kris and Jeff confusing the memories of their childhoods? Are they the same person? (I don't believe you see Jeff at the farm at the very end of the movie and I don't think you see his profile from The Sampler's records.)

Why is The Sampler a healer and a murderer?

Why are Kris and Jeff huddled in the bathtub?

What's the "high and low" sound Kris hears under the house? Why does Jeff only hear the low sound?

What is the movie saying about the nature of consciousness and what we call "individuality"?

Where is the person "Kris" when The Thief is controlling her mind?

How does The Sampler know when healing is needed?

Why is he sampling?

How much of the brainwashing lingers inside The Sampled's minds?

Why does Kris shoot The Sampler?

What's the relationship between Jeff and Kris listening to The Sampler's music and his appearance before them both? Why is Jeff unconscious and eating while Kris is fully aware?

What is Kris' identity at the very end of the movie? Who is she?

What does "Upstream" mean in the title? And "Color"?

What are the worms? Do they symbolize anything?

What is the status of "free will" in this movie?

Why does the movie open with a view of the looped paper chain links?

What's the yellow flower Kris sees in the pool?

Why does she swim so much?

Why do both Kris and Jeff run water from a faucet into a white sink and pause reflectively?

Why is Jeff linking paper straw wrappers?

How exactly did Jeff come to embezzle?

How did Kris and Jeff link immediately on the train? Or why?

How are the kids able to be so perfectly in sync in their movements under the influence of the worm juice? And why aren't they manipulated? (Kris goes immediately into a trance state after she swallows the worm...but it's the whole worm, not worm extract, so maybe her dose is far more potent.)

How did The Thief learn the appropriate dialog to use with his victims? (It's actually quite poetic.)

Why does The Thief show a moment of panic in Kris' house when he sees the hidden pistol: Isn't he in full control of her mind?

What is happening in the scene right before Kris wakes up in her SUV on the side of the highway, after The Sampler has healed her? (She's walking through rooms with people all faced away from her, bare-footed, and she stops at the sink to run water?)

Why does The Sampler kill the piglets?

What's the theology of this movie? The existential premise? The metaphysics?

I feel the movie is far from simple. The plot is straightforward but there's a lot that happens within the plot that isn't surface activity.

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[–] nightmareswin 12 years ago

im bored.

Why is Kris the only human who can perceive The Sampler in his astral form?

Why are Kris and Jeff confusing the memories of their childhoods? Are they the same person? (I don't believe you see Jeff at the farm at the very end of the movie and I don't think you see his profile from The Sampler's records.)

they are not the same person. why are they confusing memories? we aren't given the information. we are lead to believe that jeff is connected to a pig on the farm. we know that kris is connected to a pig on the farm. those pigs connect and have piglets. jeff and kris meet in life and form a connection. it is my belief that this is not something that happens between the sampled often. the sampler says he has never seen two pigs (jeff/kris) behave that way when talking to the guy about them tearing up his fence and so on, secluding themselves. maybe the bond between their two pigs is causing them to become so close they know more about each other than they should. we do not know.

Why is The Sampler a healer and a murderer?

the sampler can be viewed as a healer because he removes the worm from the victims of the thieves when they are clearly being hurt by it. why is he a murderer ... he is not. but he does his part in continuing the life cycle of the organism that is used by the thief to control his victims and ruin their lives when he dumps the piglets/pigs in the river. he dumps them in a certain spot to float downstream where orchids grow, to decompose and turn them blue, where the orchid harvesters know to find them, so they can be sold to the thief, so he can put another worm in another victim, so the sampler has a new person to link to one of his pigs to eavesdrop on. he is no murderer but he is far from innocent and clean.

Why are Kris and Jeff huddled in the bathtub?

the pigs are being secluded from each other and their children are being taken away from them. kris and jeff are connected to the pigs and feel the emotions they are feeling. jeff feels like he is trapped and he needs to fight his way out (we see him do this). kris wants to get to jeff. they find eachother and huddle together in the bath tub until the fear/feeling that someone is trying to seperate them from eachother (as is being done to the pigs on the farm) is gone.

What's the "high and low" sound Kris hears under the house? Why does Jeff only hear the low sound?

i do not know. thinking about it now, it makes me think of the sound coming from the telephone pole/electrical pole outside the samplers farm that he stops and pauses on and they stop and pause on when they reach the farm. shot in the dark.

What is the movie saying about the nature of consciousness and what we call "individuality"?

open to your own interpretation.

Where is the person "Kris" when The Thief is controlling her mind?

physically there but conciously vacant? asleep? we aren't told how the organism works.

How does The Sampler know when healing is needed?

we aren't given the information. he could sense it and go out and put his speakers down to lure the person to him, or he could be doing that once a week seeing if someone comes in, every night, every other night ..

Why is he sampling?

inspiration for his music seems to be the reason. we see him trying to create music without using the people for inspiration, but he tears it out of his notebook and throws it off the bridge. he is then sitting in the farm with the pigs and his keyboard making music again using them as inspiration? he also seems to be a loner with no connection to the world or humans other than via eavesdropping on them through his pigs.

he makes cd's which are sold in stores; we see jeff buy them and him and kris listen to them... so he is making music and recording with results.

How much of the brainwashing lingers inside The Sampled's minds?

seems to be some pieces of it. for jeff, we see him staring out the window and making the paper chains at one point. we see kris diving in the pool and collecting rocks. the book walden seems to be a bit of an awakener for the victims at the end of the movie.

What's the relationship between Jeff and Kris listening to The Sampler's music and his appearance before them both? Why is Jeff unconscious and eating while Kris is fully aware?

my take on this is some sort of reverse engineering of the sampling of them using his music .. we see jeff listen to the music first and take the headphoens off right away, like it does nothing for him. kris puts them on and then we see the sampler watching jeff, she walks in, and then she makes eye contact with him.. he is surprised as *beep* .. jeff cannot see him, he is not unconcious he is just not concious of the sampler watching him so he does not look up.

Why does Kris shoot The Sampler?

all this wierd stuff has been going on .. they are lead to the samplers farm, jeff finds his music, kris catches him "sampling" them.. she believes that he is the person responsible for everything that has happened to her. in a way, she is right. as i said earlier, he does do his part to keep the life cycle of the organism going and did his part to facilitate the thief with what he needed to control her .. she killed the sampler, now there are no more blue orchids, and no more people will be controlled by the thief.

What is Kris' identity at the very end of the movie? Who is she?

she is a person whose life has been ruined, who has been trying to put it back together for quite a while, without any luck, who has had no clue what has been happening to her, who finally has answers and control and the possibility of finally moving forward. (my view).

Why does the movie open with a view of the looped paper chain links?

i don't remember this exactly, i do remember the movie opening with the thief carrying trash bags of the paper chains to a dumpster. we now know that this tells us he just got finished doing to someone else what we are going to see him do to kris later in the film.

Why is Jeff linking paper straw wrappers?

my thinking is that he does this as a residual effect of his encounter with the thief. he seems to be staring blankly out the window as he does it .. much like reciting walden while diving for rocks seems to be a soothing thing for kris, this might be for jeff.

How exactly did Jeff come to embezzle?

we are not told this information, but one would guess that if he was taken by the thief in the same way kris was, the thief had him move the money around until he could grab it and then the thief took it and ran.

How did Kris and Jeff link immediately on the train? Or why?

the worm that came out of kris is inside a pig on the samplers farm. we are led to believe that the same is true for jeff. these two pigs on the farm bond and pair off. when jeff and kris see eachother on the train, that connection causes them to link or connect as well.

How are the kids able to be so perfectly in sync in their movements under the influence of the worm juice? And why aren't they manipulated? (Kris goes immediately into a trance state after she swallows the worm...but it's the whole worm, not worm extract, so maybe her dose is far more potent.)

exactly my thoughts. the thief is testing it out to make sure it is going to work, but a much smaller dose on the kids. we see him standing in the doorway watching them. one is manipulating the other. putting the worm in kris is far more potent and as long as the worm is in her, always there.

How did The Thief learn the appropriate dialog to use with his victims? (It's actually quite poetic.)

i don't think it is any "appropriate" dialogue.. i think he has just done it so many times the words are second nature and refined that they come across very well. plus it is a movie so poetic works better.

Why does The Thief show a moment of panic in Kris' house when he sees the hidden pistol: Isn't he in full control of her mind?

i don't recall panic when he see's the pistol... will need to watch for that.

What is happening in the scene right before Kris wakes up in her SUV on the side of the highway, after The Sampler has healed her? (She's walking through rooms with people all faced away from her, bare-footed, and she stops at the sink to run water?)

i think that she isn't yet concious from having the worm taken out of her but the pig is being released back into the farm and she is experiencing a version of that; the people she sees facing away from her are other pigs on the farm (or person versions of the people connected to them). when she turns on the faucet and looks back, realizing she passed all those people, she wakes up.

Why does The Sampler kill the piglets?

to continue the life cycle of the organism, he puts the piglets into a sack and dumps them from the bridge. they float downstream to where the orchids are growing, decay, and the organism grows into the orchids turning it blue. harvesters come, pick the blue orchids, sell them in their shop, the thief buys the orchids, creates another victim, the sampler takes the worm from it, puts it in another pig, and the cycle starts again. it probably isn't usually baby pigs, but maybe when a pig with a worm in it dies naturally or its time to dump one he does it.

What's the theology of this movie? The existential premise? The metaphysics?

i leave that up to you.

I feel the movie is far from simple. The plot is straightforward but there's a lot that happens within the plot that isn't surface activity.

much agreed.

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[–] alan-page-ca 12 years ago

I'm glad that so many people have thought about this movie and put forward interesting ideas. I just watched it and my initial impression is that this is a behavior-altering parasite that has evolved to change the behavior of humans in order to promote its life cycle. An example in ants is the "zombie ant". The behavior changes don't always make sense from the human's point of view, but do make sense from the parasite point of view. Kris gets cured of cancer by the parasite because the parasite has an evolutionary interest in keeping the host healthy.

At the end of the movie the people take over the farm because they can then take care of the pigs and further the life cycle of the parasite, assuming that the pigs are an important part of the life cycle.

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[–] nightmareswin 12 years ago

At the end of the movie the people take over the farm because they can then take care of the pigs and further the life cycle of the parasite, assuming that the pigs are an important part of the life cycle.

it was my feeling that they (kris, jeff and the other victims) took over the farm and took care of the pigs to regain a sense of control .. over their lives and emotions and whatever else has been happening to them because of their link with the farm.

they let the pigs be pigs and ensure no one messes with them, interrupts them, causes them to feel extreme emotion that would in turn be inflicted upon the person linked to the pig, and so on .. let them be the calm, serene, happy little buggers that they are when humans don't interfere and nothing negative will come the victims way any longer.

i also believe that they will not further the life cycle of the parasite; the pigs are an important part of the cycle, and i believe that they will now be kept out of it and the cycle will be broken.

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[–] the-author 11 years ago

The sounds Jeff and Chris 'hear' are the sounds he records and plays for the pigs.

Jeff and Chris are later amazed after finding where the sampler lives, getting his name and music company, then purchasing his recordings.

Also, I don't think he intentionally places the piglets where they will continue the cycle. He wants to kill them off, but unintentionally supplies 'blue' to the orchids and unknowingly perpetuates the cycle.

Best unknown feature at IMDB.com
http://www.imdb.com/features/video/browse/

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