Upstream Color.
Saw it at Sundance London yesterday, and I'm comfortable in saying it's one of the best, most outrageously inventive things I've ever experienced (alongside the Holy Mountain, Last Year at Marienbad, Eraserhead, etc.).
The fact that Shane Carruth, the guy who made Primer, has had to distribute it himself, with no release as far in the UK as far as I'm aware beyond four festival screenings (and zilch in the rest of the world), is the kind of non-recognition-of-genius thing that compelled Van Gogh to sever his own ear. Shane Carruth is undoubtedly a visionary artistic genius and Upstream Color will stand the test as one of the best movies ever made, of that I'm confident. If David Foster Wallace made movies, and was as good at making them as he was at writing, I'm pretty sure this is the kind of thing he would have made.
The trailer itself is a work of art in itself, but only hints at the madness it advertises.
There are a few movies (off the top of my head) which I guess it could be said to owe a certain debt to, what with its thematic concerns and stylistic palette:
Mullholland Drive
21 Grams
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Three Colours Trilogy
The Tree of Life
Last Year at Marienbad
Primer (obviously)
But if those films are a moderate to strong strain of marijuana, Upstream Color is LSD. It actually feels like being on acid watching it. Horror, beauty, bafflement. What's perhaps so spell-binding is that it doesn't have the kind of forced or relatively dumbed-down metaphysical concerns that 21 Grams or Eternal Sunshine do (and I love both of those films). The stuff about 'sampling' our pasts and reassembling them, which is conveyed through a guy who is a godlike field-recording collector; genetic mutations through animal and plant life; Henry David Thoreau's Walden as a symbolic lynchpin; all of this is played out in a way that doesn't scream out LOOK, I'M A METAPHOR or AN IMAGE. They're not subtexts -- they're central to the film's plot and whole construction. But at the same time, the characters don't just feel like vehicles for expressing this kind of freewheeling show-off art-school pretension. At its heart, it is a very intense love story. And it all comes together like those things do -- reality, spirituality, narrative confusion -- on a very intense trip. With your girlfriend. Argh!
What's additionally beautiful is the fact that Shane Carruth made exactly the film he wanted to make, and only he could have done it. There's nothing better, I don't think, than feeling you're in the hands of a man who has a singular control over such a vast work, from the script to the soundtrack right through to the distribution. And knowing that he didn't compromise, even if it means hardened film critics walk out wondering what the fuck that was all about.
Finally: Owing to the ridiculous way in which it's being distributed (i.e. not at all), Upstream Color is going to be available for download and on DVD pretty soon, in the US at least. I think you should probably watch it if you haven't already.