A TOPIARY: Sizzle Reel Released for Unmade Shane Carruth Science-Fiction Epic
shane carruthThe film business is a cutthroat industry, and for every masterwork produced, there remain those sidelined in its wake. Perhaps the most heartbreaking of these in recent memory is Primer director Shane Carruth’s A Topiary, a science-fiction of epic proportions that has become the great tragedy of his career.
The narrative itself hints toward why this production never saw the light of day, something too obscure for a mass audience. In classic Carruth-style, it’s a highly ambitious, decade-spanning story unfolding in a 245-page script with an intended running time of two and a half hours, costing an estimated $14 million. The screenplay itself is easily available online, with the first act following a worker for the department of transport in the 1980s, who finds himself enraptured with subliminal patterns within recurring traffic accidents. This evolves into a lifelong obsession into discovering what this all means, a venture that ultimately seems fruitless. The remaining two hours switch to follow a group of young boys who discover an alien device that prints matter, proceeding to morph and evolve into sentient structures called ‘choruses’. What follows is a mind-warping investigation into creation, conflict and the question of existence both human and extra-terrestrial. It appears to be something wholly unique in the science-fiction spectrum that plays with cinematic conventions - a truly original venture.
Released on the Upstream Color Twitter, a sizzle-reel serving as a proof-of-concept, initially made in 2011, has given us some idea of what A Topiary would have looked like. Set to the stirring strings of Hans Zimmer’s Time and narration from then-child actress Zoe Locke, it pulls footage from classic films, as well as beautifully rendered shots of Carruth’s ‘choruses’, the interconnecting extra-terrestrial parasite at the core of the narrative.
It seems no coincidence that the ‘trailer’ for this long-gestating project should surface mere days after HBO’s $30 million investment into the Justice League ‘Snyder Cut’. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have provided independent filmmakers with homes and funding for their projects. One need look no further than Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying or Scott Z. Burns’ The Report, to see how much power these giants of home cinema have when it comes to publicising the work of auteur filmmakers. Even the executive producers attached to A Topiary, Steven Soderbergh (The Laundromat, High Flying Bird) and David Fincher (the upcoming Mank) have struck deals with Netflix to fund and distribute their projects. It begs the question: in a cinematic climate where streaming services equal the ambition of major studios, is there a world where Carruth’s magnum opus sees the light of day? There should be.
The future for Carruth is unclear. Since his last feature directorial effort, Upstream Color, he has flitted between composer work on Starz drama The Girlfriend Experience, executive producing The Wanting Mare and starring in sci-fi horror The Dead Center. After writing the now-shelved shipping drama The Modern Ocean, he has since admitted to Indiewire the existence of “one last project” before quitting the industry for good. It’s a melancholic end for a filmmaker whose two films have left such a lasting impact. This trailer for his unmade film is, in short, a promise of what could have been, delivered in a supremely affecting way. It makes one question how many potential masterworks have been lost to time, and how many filmmakers’ hearts have been broken.
