Cult-Movie Review: Upside Down (2013)

Far too many literal-minded movie critics really missed the boat on Upside Down (2013) a visually-dazzling love story that knowingly eschews the Laws of Physics in order to dramatize its Romeo and Juliet-styled tale.

From what I can discern by the negative reviews, the primary critical concern with Upside Down is that the force of gravity in the movie’s universe bears no resemblance to the force of gravity in our reality. 

But commendably, the movie immediately acknowledges this fact in literally its first minute.It does so by diagramming for audiences the rules of this fictional form of gravity in three concise, well-enunciated bullet points.

I now quote the film’s Romeo figure, Adam (Jim Sturgess), describing the rules of his “dual gravity” solar system.  He establishes:

1.     All matter is pulled by the gravity of the world that it comes from, and not the other.

2.     An object's weight can be offset using matter from the opposite world (known as inverse matter).

3.    After a few hours of contact, matter in contact with inverse matter burns.

So, those are the film’s rules.

Accordingly, it’s not a valid line of criticism to object that Upside Down is scientifically inaccurate, or worse, scientifically ignorant.  On the contrary, the movie knowingly sets up its own rules and then attempts to abide by those rules. 

What concerns I possess about the 2013 film, therefore, occur when Upside Down seems to violate its own stated rules, not the rules of gravity as we understand them in “reality.” 

More on that later…

But for the moment, you may quite rightly ask: why give Upside Down a free pass on scientific accuracy? 

Well, even beyond the fact that the movie commences by vocally establishing the rules of its fictional universe, it’s also pretty clear early on that Upside Down conforms to the tenets of a popular literary movement known as magical or magic realism.

In literature (or film…) of this school, a realistic setting is featured, but that realistic setting is buttressed or altered by one crucial aspect of fantasy.

In other words, the super-normal blends with the normal, but is taken for granted (or indeed, as normal) by the world’s inhabitants.

Upside Down is practically a textbook example of magical realism on film because it concerns the theme of most magical realism texts --a revolution against powerful societal forces, or against the Establishment -- and because it captures the emotional reality of its story and human life, if not the literal reality of both.

In other words, a magical reality film like Upside Down expresses a subconscious or emotional truth rather than a literal one.

Such a work of art shows us the world as we might feel it, rather than the world as we rationally and scientifically experience it. In this case, what Upside Down declares about love is, simply, that it is so powerful that it will make you want to defy gravity, and nature itself, to consummate it.

Judged as a work of magical reality -- and considering that the rules of its universe are spelled out fairly bluntly -- Upside Down succeeds as an imaginative and visually beautiful work of art. 

In this case, the decision to come at the story from a starting point of magical realism also works in regards to the film’s romantic angle. Let’s face it: the key narrative technique underlining any truly epic love story is to throw obstacles out before a pair of unlike lovers. The bigger the obstacles, the greater the challenges to that romantic relationship become.

Upside Down carries that very old love story concept about as far down the field as is possible, and in the process establishes something rather nice about the indomitable nature of the human race.

 People may be bound to different worlds -- literally -- but that gulf can still be traversed.

In fact -- and yes, this is indeed ironic -- Upside Down even discusses science (if even the science of a “fantasy world”) in a positive fashion, as the very avenue that can help bridge that seemingly unbridgeable distance for the star-crossed lovers. 

“What if love were stronger than gravity?”

A young man named Adam (Sturgess) recounts the tale of how he fell in love with Eden (Kirsten Dunst), even though they are from different worlds in a dual gravity system, and gravity precludes them from being together as a couple. 

Adam originates from the “lower world,” one devoid of energy, light and other resources. By contrast, Eden is from the upper world, a realm of wealth and luxury where the Transworld Corporation has drained the lower world dry.

Building on long-held family secret, Adam realizes that pink bee pollen -- found at the mountain range where the upper and lower world nearly touch -- may hold the key to moving back and forth from the gravity of one world to another.

Unfortunately, the established social mores on both planets revolve around the “full separation of worlds.”

This means that if Adam is discovered making any attempt to contact Eden, or visiting the Upper World, he will be punished by the full weight of the law.  And worse, Eden could be punished for his transgression too.

Ten years after their initial meeting, and following an accident which injures Eden, Adam learns that she is still alive, and acquires a job at the Transworld Tower so as to meet with her again.

Unfortunately, Eden has no memory of Adam, because of the accident that separated them a decade earlier. 

Using inverse matter to cross over into Eden’s world, Adam attempts to return to her life, and awaken her memories of their relationship. But Adam must evade the corporate authorities and trick the very laws of Physics to accomplish his goal.

“Those people are vultures…”

A few weeks back, I reviewed Elysium (2013) and felt somewhat disappointed by that film’s less-than-well-rounded treatment of the haves vs. have-nots situation.

For one thing, Elysium never really establishes even a basic sense of reality around its futuristic premise. To wit: no matter the good intentions involved, you simply can’t flood a space station with hundreds of visitors, rich or poor, because it is a closed system.

In such a system, population and resources must be managed, or everybody dies. So in making its straw man political case, Elysium never even pays lip-service to that basic reality about life in an artificial environment. 

I kept hoping that the Jodie Foster character would comment, at least little, on a possible rationale for keeping the unwashed masses out of the gated community in space. The movie would have been more three dimensional were that the case.

Instead, we’re merely left with the idea that everyone on Elysium is ultra rich…and ultra-evil.

Upside Down, which also features two competing environments locked in a similar “haves vs. have-nots” scenario, seems much more plausible, and the story is less heavy-handed in presentation. One world exploits the other, and the TransWorld Corporation enforces segregation, so that each side never learns to see the other side as being fully human.

Specifically, the Upper World sees the population of the lower world as being riff-raff, and the population of the lower world sees the upper world folks as “vultures.”  So yes, after a fashion -- and in a deliberately fantastic setting -- this is a story about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with a girl of the upper class.

It takes a love affair consisting of an individual from each world involved for people to start seeing beyond the stereotypes erected by the cultures and by the corporation.

The message may indeed be hokey -- love changes everything, essentially -- but in a sense, it also rings true regarding human experience. 

In my experience, real social change arises not from demagoguery, but from personal familiarity. If we have siblings or parents or children who who are gay or straight, black or white, Christian or atheist, conservative or liberal, we begin to see those “others” not as insidious agendas or as forces to be afraid of, but as real people with the same foibles and strengths, fears and dreams, that we possess. In getting to know and understand them, we affirm their humanity…and in return, they affirm ours.

In a sense, that is the very social change that Upside Down suggests: one brought on by the knowledge that the two worlds are not so different after all. We all want to live happily ever after, and we all want to experience love. We have so much common ground, so why focus on the things we don’t share instead of the things we do share?

In literary and film history we have encountered many star-crossed lovers before, in Romeo and Juliet, and in Cameron’s Titanic (1997) to name just two examples. In these cases, social constructs like class have stood as the barriers to the central love relationship. Upside Down goes a great deal further by suggesting a system of built-in barriers; ones that are created by Nature Itself.

Yet importantly, technological man possesses the ability, the movie states, to overcome that hindrance as well. Science provides Adam (and later his friend, Bob) with answer to bring the two worlds together. This is why Upside Down, despite its wacky gravity and magical reality, is not anti-science. It suggests that by understanding nature, man can reshape it to his will. In this age of denying science, or flat out ignorance about it (like the recent report that one in four Americans believe the sun circles the Earth...), Upside Down doesn't really contribute to the problem, at least if a viewer is paying attention.

Upside Down’s metaphor about the nature of love works in many ways, and at times, subtly so.

For instance, in all of history, has a gay man ever had to pretend to look, sound, and act like a “straight” man to survive and thrive in straight society? Has he ever had to pretend to be “somebody else” during his time at “the office?”

Of course.

And isn’t that very act of “pretending” to be someone else the very task that Adam is faced with here? He must adjust his very person -- right down to the pull of gravity, his very biological nature -- so as to be acceptable in the “upper world.” 

In terms of visuals, Upside Down is incredibly original and very imaginative. At times, it even boasts a nice sense of humor about itself, particularly in a funny split-screen shot between Sturgess and Dunst. I was reminded of the old Doris Day/Rock Hudson films, only here, one of those stars would be perched upside down...

Certainly, it took my eyes a while to adjust to the meticulous detail of this dual gravity visual aesthetic, but some compositions in the film resonate almost instantly. For example, the movie reveals what can only be described as the Office from Hell -- a realm of cubicles multiplied by eternity and then reflected back on itself. Here, and in some other shots as well, the audience understands precisely what the writers are getting at, and what kind of world is being portrayed.  

As I noted in my introduction, some aspects of Upside Down bothered me a bit. I think Eden's development of amnesia after her accident is a bit contrived, for one thing. It's not really necessary. A slightly more clever screenplay could have found other reasons to keep the lovers apart.

I also have one other, more significant concern.  Rule #3 concerns the fact that matter and inverse matter burn up when in contact with one another...after just a few hours. How then, does Adam’s sperm not burn-up Eden’s womb?

And I guess their sexual intercourse was shorter than a few hours, right? 

I think the movie bends this third rule a bit, frankly, and this fact makes it harder to defend and appreciate. There’s no problem with creating your own universe and your own rules, I believe, but there must be consistency, or it all falls apart.

Still, I don’t believe Upside Down falls apart. I enjoyed the fanciful, light nature of the film, and felt that it made its thematic point about changing the social order in a graceful, almost effortless fashion. The film's commitment to magical realism means that the film's love story resonates too. We all know how love can make us feel weightless, or contrarily, weighted down, at times. The movie is simply a literalization of that premise.  It's about the ways that (difficult...) love can make us feel.

For some reason, there always seems to be a backlash against sincere movies like this one. It’s as if we’re too cynical or too jaded now to be taken in by an old-fashioned story of star-crossed lovers, or to accept a premise that doesn't strictly adhere to some dark, gritty, pre-ordained sense of "naturalism."

In any regard, such cynicism seems to prevent a lot of people from suspending disbelief for ninety or so minutes and enjoying a worthwhile and imaginative little romance.   

If you ask me, that's the virtue that truly seems upside-down.