Primer is for nerds, computer programmers, philosophers, Mensa members and dorks. The film was directed and filmed mostly in a garage by Shaun Carruth for $7,000 and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004. It has gained a cult status in the film world, among film dorks and nerds for the ideas and conundrums that it lays out for its audience. It looks great and certainly leaves one with many questions.
The film begins with four young men hashing out complex ideas of programming that are well beyond my understanding. It’s unclear whether any of them fully understand what they are discussing either, but they are comfortable pushing their minds and knowledge. They work out of a garage and use the dining room table as their meeting place. Two of the men, Abe and Aaron begin a new project, one that has implications that are unknown but huge. They increasingly push the other two away from their work. They steal a catalytic converter for platinum and rip a part an old refrigerator for its Freon. The machine they create seems to produce an exorbitant amount of protein, more protein that it has time to secrete. Maybe time inside the machine is occurring at a different rate than that outside of it. So they build two similar machines that can each house a person.
Perhaps the two leads know on some level what they are doing, but it’s obvious that they are in over their heads. It’s always as if we’re eaves-dropping on their conversations—things are hazy and said quickly, excitedly and softly, important science and principles of physics are left out. It is obvious why someone would want to be able to travel forward and back in time, but what of the dangerous implications?
There certainly is danger lurking in their experiments. After a few times in the machine, one of the two men has blood coming out of his ear. Why and how did this happen? What period of time did this happen in? A future they have not encountered yet? Then there is a moment where they look through a pair of binoculars, watching what appears to be their doubles leaving the storage facility where the machine is stored. Are the Abe and Aaron being watched the two living in real time and the Abe and Aaron doing the watching those who traveled back in time? It’s unclear to me, and it will at least be somewhat difficult to figure out for those smarter than I.
This could be a fun undertaking—perhaps watching the film multiple times, taking notes, etc. But I’ve got to tell you that seems like a lot of time and effort to waste for a movie that doesn’t love, or even hate, its characters. They are merely there to advance the puzzle and, though their persons are put into danger by their undertaking, it doesn’t seem all that important if they are hurt or not. The other characters that litter the film are fully marginalized. They are simply there to populate the situations in which the two leads find and put themselves in. I had the opposite reaction to this movie that I had with Ben Affleck’s The Town—the ideas and narrative put forth by Primer are endlessly inventive and interesting, but putting concern behind the leads is something that the film does not allow. Sure, there are wonderful loopholes and loose ends to ponder, but there is nothing that makes me truly care enough to take the time.
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