Primer

[Homercles]

Name of the movie is Primer. Its a low budget Independent film. And it confused the hell out of me.

Has anyone else seen this thing? If so, kindly explain to me what the hell happened??

Ive never seen a more confusing time travel movie.


Its On Demand right now. If you havent seen it, go watch it so you can explain a few things to me.

[Aslanna]

Doesn't sound like Ebert knows all the answers either! Sounds like they stretched out $7000 fairly well though.

Shane Carruth's "Primer" opens with four techheads addressing envelopes to possible investors; they seek venture capital for a machine they're building in the garage. They're not entirely sure what the machine does, although it certainly does something. Their dialogue is halfway between shop talk and one of those articles in Wired magazine that you never finish. We don't understand most of what they're saying, and neither, perhaps, do they, but we get the drift. Challenging us to listen closely, to half-understand what they half-understand, is one of the ways the film sucks us in.

They steal a catalytic converter for its platinum, and plunder a refrigerator for its freon. Their budget is so small, they could cash the checks on the bus. Aaron and Abe, agreeing that whatever they've invented, they're the ones who invented it, subtly eliminate the other two from the enterprise. They then regard something that looks like an insulated shipping container with wires and dials and coils stuff. This is odd: It secretes protein. More protein than it has time to secrete. Measuring the protein's rate of growth, they determine that one minute in the garage is equal to 1,347 minutes in the machine.

Is time in the machine different than time outside the machine? Apparently. But that would make it some kind of time machine, wouldn't it? Hard to believe. Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) ponder the machine and look at their results and Aaron concludes it is "the most important thing any living being has ever witnessed." But what is it?

There's a fascination in the way they talk with each other, quickly, softly, excitedly. It's better, actually, that we don't understand everything they say, because that makes us feel more like eavesdroppers and less like the passive audience for predigested dialogue. We can see where they're heading, especially after ... well, I don't want to give away some of the plot, and I may not understand the rest, but it would appear that they can travel through time. They learn this by seeing their doubles before they have even tried time travel -- proof that later they will travel back to now. Meanwhile (is that the word?) a larger model of the machine is/was assembled in a storage locker by them/their doubles.

Should they personally experiment with time travel? Yes, manifestly, because they already have. "I can think of no way in which this thing would be considered even remotely close to safe," one of them says. But they try it out, journeying into the recent past and buying some mutual funds they know will rise in value.

It seems to work. The side effect, however, is that occasionally there are two of them: the Abe or Aaron who originally lived through the time, and the one who has gone back to the time and is living through it simultaneously. One is a double. Which one? There is a shot where they watch "themselves" from a distance, and we assume those they're watching are themselves living in ordinary time, and they are themselves having traveled back to observe them. But which Abe or Aaron is the real one? If they met, how would they speak? If two sets of the same atoms exist in the same universe at the same time, where did the additional atoms come from? It can make you hungry, thinking about questions like that. "I haven't eaten since later this afternoon," one complains.

"Primer" is a puzzle film that will leave you wondering about paradoxes, loopholes, loose ends, events without explanation, chronologies that don't seem to fit. Abe and Aaron wonder, too, and what seems at first like a perfectly straightforward method for using the machine turns out to be alarmingly complicated; various generations of themselves and their actions prove impossible to keep straight. Carruth handles the problems in an admirably understated way; when one of the characters begins to bleed a little from an ear, what does that mean? Will he be injured in a past he has not yet visited? In that case, is he the double? What happened to the being who arrived at this moment the old-fashioned way, before having traveled back?

The movie delights me with its cocky confidence that the audience can keep up. "Primer" is a film for nerds, geeks, brainiacs, Academic Decathlon winners, programmers, philosophers and the kinds of people who have made it this far into the review. It will surely be hated by those who "go to the movies to be entertained," and embraced and debated by others, who will find it entertains the parts the others do not reach. It is maddening, fascinating and completely successful

Note: Carruth wrote, directed and edited the movie, composed the score, and starred in it. The budget was reportedly around $7,000, but that was enough: The movie never looks cheap, because every shot looks as it must look. In a New York Times interview, Carruth said he filmed largely in his own garage, and at times he was no more sure what he was creating than his characters were. "Primer" won the award for best drama at Sundance 2004.

[Homercles]

heh. Even that review gets some of it wrong.

I can piece some of the film together. Better than Ebert could. He's more lost than I am on what happened during the film. He describes things backwards. He says they go back in time, but the way the machine is built, they can only go forward.

And thats where my confusion comes in. Cuz I think that maybe one of them does go back in time (which according to the mechanics of the machine is impossible)

Hell I dont know. If you like those mindbender whatthefukjusthappend movies, then youll like this one.

[Fairweather Pure]

I liked it, but it's not a movie for most people. I can only think of 1 or 2 real life friends I would reccommend this to. Think of the movie "pie" but even more confusing....

[Thess]

I was confused by this movie as well. Watched it today... I was confused in the beginning, kind of caught on in the middle then the end - I had no clue what was happening.

[Aslanna]

I was following for awhile.. By the end I was like 'wtf is going on!' I get the general idea but for some reason it's not all coming together.

And yeah Ebert did get some things wrong. Doesn't he take notes!

[Drinsic Darkwood]

heh. Even that review gets some of it wrong.

I can piece some of the film together. Better than Ebert could. He's more lost than I am on what happened during the film. He describes things backwards. He says they go back in time, but the way the machine is built, they can only go forward.

And thats where my confusion comes in. Cuz I think that maybe one of them does go back in time (which according to the mechanics of the machine is impossible)

Hell I dont know. If you like those mindbender whatthefukjusthappend movies, then youll like this one.

I watched it about three times in a row, and from the way I see it they can only go back in time, but only as far back as they have turned on the machine (so they're not flying around years before they created it):

They go to the machines at (for example) 8:00 am. They set the machines to turn on at 8:15 am (they don't want to be there when their doubles pop out - paradoxes and all that shit). They leave, go to the nearby town (Russellville?), and try to stay away from everything. While they're out here, they'd check stocks to see what goes up. Hours after they've turned the machine on (I forget how long it took, for example purposes, let's say it winds down at 3:00 pm), they go back and get inside (which would be jumping in at the 'B' end of the diagram), and they spend the time in the machine basically going back to when they turn it on (8:15) and jump out at the 'A' end. At this point they would go and live their normal lives and buy lots of the aforementioned stocks. That's how I remember following it anyway.

It's been over a year since I've seen this, I remember a few pieces of the plot (I think there ends up being 3 Aarons and 2 Abes), but I'd honestly have to watch it again (probably ten fucking times) to figure it out.

[Hesten]

Yeah, its one confusing movie. But its a GREAT movie from a indie point of view, proves that you CAN still make good movies on a small budget.

[Sylvus]

I watched this a couple nights ago and while I really liked it, I'm still a bit baffled. I think I need to see it again.

But it was well acted and the diaglogue was good, and as a bit of a nerd (though not that specific kind) I thought they did a good job of at least making it sound like they knew their science.

I only watched it because I remembered this thread, so thx recommendation.