Upside Down

Upside Down, the amazing new film by relative newcomer to the directors chair, Juan Solanas is a sight to behold. It is a visual feast for the eyes and basically destroys all those other so called "visually stunning" movies within the first fifteen minutes of the film. It's a film blessed with the most engaging storyline since Cloud Atlas and that coupled with ingenious film making is the reason Upside Down gets four buckets of Killer Korn.






When I first saw the trailer for this movie, my first reaction was it looked hokey. The more I thought about it though the more the premise of the film grew on me and then I thought it looked interesting enough to see, even if Kirsten Dunst, who plays Eden is in the film. I am no real fan of hers but I am a fan of Jim Sturgess who plays Adam. I became a fan of his ever since I saw him in the 2007 film Across The Universe. These two live on separate planets that revolve around each other and together they revolve around the sun. The only thing connecting the two planets is a massive building owned and operated by Trans World. The same company that has made Adam into an orphan when he was a child. There are laws to keep any kind of fraternizing between the the people from "up above" and those from "down below". "Up Above" is a planet drowning in wealth, while "Down Below" is choking on poverty and those up above want none of those from down below coming to their planet but Adam has some real incentive to "fall above".


The twin planets have their own separate gravitational pull, and the planet you were born on is the planets gravitational pull you're affected by. So if you were born from "Down Below", you couldn't get to the planet above without some weights from that planet and vice versa. Sadly though, that can't last forever because any materials not from the originating planet will begin to heat up and eventually combust. That includes the weights one would use to hold themselves down on a planet they aren't from. Now when Adam was a boy his favorite person was his aunt and that was due to her "flying pancakes". They were able to float through the air due to a certain pollen the bees, who aren't affected by either planets gravitational pull spread over flowers in the mountains near Adams house. One day he went further than he ever has before up the mountain, past the clouds and through his model plane. It landed on the sister planet and Eden found it while looking for her dog.


The two strike up a friendship and that lasted for years and they would meet at the same mountainous peaks that allowed them to yell at each other. Adam would also throw a rope to Eden and pull her down to his planet and the two would hang out. One day Eden and Adam were caught spending time together and Eden suffered a serious head wound. Adam thought she dies and the two hadn't seen each other in ten years until a lottery was announced for a citizen from Down Below to get a job at Trans World and Adam sees Eden announce the deal on television. At the same time, Adam is working on an anti aging cream, using the bee pollen and Trans World wants it. That allows Adam to get in and seek out Eden for a reunion. He makes it happen, but sadly it doesn't go the way he hoped.


This movie was written by director Juan Solanas and I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when he and his friends were putting this thing together. I can only imagine they were all high as clouds on some kind of mind altering narcotic. That's the only way I could imagine this story coming from the ether in the first place, let alone all the smart aspects of it. I really couldn't find a single flaw in this movie, the cast was perfect, outside of Kirsten, the acting was superb, and again visually this movie has no competition. It's truly lovely to look at, and there was even times I forgot I had a bag of popcorn in my lap. If you know me, you know how truly strange that is. I blame it on the visuals (an inverted, reversed MC Escher drawing on steroids), story line, and the music. Scored by Benoit Charest with additional music by one of my favorites Mark Isham, the music was beautiful and graceful, a perfect fit for the images on the screen.

There was a critic who said something regarding the Senna documentary that I think fits here so perfectly. He said the Senna docu was "Completely Unmissable" and that phrase totally fits Upside Down in every way. I say skip Oz the Great and Powerful and and spend your money on a ticket for Upside Down. You will not be sorry at all and I'll see you at the theater.