Upending
This page avoids major plot turns, twists, and ending details. It’s designed to help first-time viewers decide if this movie is right for them.What counts as a spoiler can vary by viewer.
Upending approaches the new medium of 3D in ways that Hollywood cannot conceive. The film has the viewers’ eyes probing the projected imagery almost as if touching its light, feeling for the illusory surfaces of things as they cross the threshold from abstraction to likeness. The scenes evoke a human and natural world that seems on the point of vanishing; in doing so, it enacts a drama of dislocation and re-orientation, with viewers becoming exquisitely aware of their own perceptual processes and of their minds’ continual attempt to spin out meaning from what their eyes take in. The play of images is accompanied by excerpts of a special new recording of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 1 as performed by the virtuoso musicians of the Flux Quartet. The recording places the listener in the center of (rather than at the usual distance from) the ensemble so that every sonic gesture articulates itself across the space of the theater.