Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
The company releasing this film sent a screener tape to Mr. Beaks, which he was kind enough to screen here at the Labs, but I want to see this one in a theater with an audience. It’s the kind of film that should be fun to discuss with others as soon as it ends. Here’s one of my favorite long-time AICN contributors with his take on the film:
Hey Harry et all,
In case some of you readers out there aren't as excited about the AICN Primer screening as you might have been about Sky Captain or A Dirty Shame, please allow me to add a bit more fuel to the fire...
Primer is one of those independent success stories that seems to happen less and less these days, in which a young filmmaker throws a relatively minute amount of his own cash (usually augmented by that of his friends and relatives), makes a film, which somehow gets seen by the right person at the Sundance Film Festival, at which the film is a big hit, possibly wins some awards, and secures a distribution deal that catapults the director into the stratosphere of auteurs.
It happened more frequently in the late nineties, when the the above scenario was be applicable to Darren Arronofsky's Pi and Nolan's Following (substitute Slamdance for Sundance in this case) and The Blair Witch Project. In the first two cases, the directors have since gone on to find success; the Blair Witch guys seems to have pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth (actually, before anyone calls me out on it, I know this isn't exactly true, as any regular reader of IndiWIRE's blogs would know, but at the same time they're not directing Watchmen or Batman), but I think writer/director Shane Carruth shouldn't worry too much about that; he fits in more comfortably with Arronofsky and Nolan, and he's made a film which displays a very cognizant cinematic talent. Primer, produced on the budget made famous by Robert Rodriguez - seven grand - is very sparse and minimalist, but Carruth knows how to not just work within his limitations, but exploit them to the best possible effect.
The plot of the film, which has been touted as infernally complex, is actually quite simple. It's something you might even have seen before - on The Twilight Zone, perhaps. What is complex is the manner in which Carruth tells the story. This is not a film for idle viewers. It moves at a brisk pace, and not only does it not pause to make sure audiences are keeping up with things, it seems almost intentionally elusive. This, I think, is the first film I've ever seen with not only no exposition, but negative amounts of exposition.
Here's the plot, which you may want to read and store in the back of your head, so that you can refer to it when needed while you're watching the film. Four yuppie friends - Aaron (Carruth himself), Abe (David Sullivan), Robert (Casey Gooden) and Phillip (Anand Upadhyaya) - return home each day from their office jobs and gather in Aaron's suburban garage to invent things. They've put together an error checking device for computers, which they sell via mail order, but they all dream of coming up with...something. Something big, something that the world might need and that, more importantly, will make them rich and free to quit their dreary day jobs. They're all incredibly smart, but they lack a vision; thus, they just experiment with various problems that might need solving and build things that may or may not have any real purpose and that pose questions they don't really know how to explain
Just as most great inventions are discovered accidentally, Abe and Aaron discover one day that they've engineered a box that not only produces self sustaining energey, but which seems to have odd effects on time continuum. They put a plastic toy into the box, and when they remove it a day later, it's surface has sprouted an odd fungus that technically should have taken several years to accumulate. Abe and Aaron know they're onto something -- what, exactly, they're not quite sure of, but they quickly shut the other two guys out of the group and try to figure out what it is they've come up with. Aaron wonders what would happen if they built a larger version of the box. Abe, one step ahead of him, has a surprise: he already has, in a U-Haul storage shed.
Using stopwatches, they determine that objects inside the box exist inversely to the normal temporal progression in the real world; thus, if one were to, say, hop in the box for six hours, they'd emerge six hours earlier. Would it be safe to do so? Abe has another surprise: he already has. And as any student of Back To The Future will know, when one travels in time, one runs the risk of encountering one's past or future self. Here, Abe gently tells Aaron not to scream or feel like he's being tricked before handing him a pair of binoculars so he can see...Abe, from the six hours in the future that is now the present, leaving the storage facility.
Okay, when you first watch the film, you may call me crazy for saying this: but it almost all makes perfect sense. What I thought were plot holes initially are actually just the inherent contradictions and loopholes that exist with any time travel story. There are a few details I'm still not sure of, but there were even more before I sat down and actually thought about everything that happened. And how wonderful is that -- a film that inspires you to think when it's over! You definitely need to think while you're watching it, or you'll lose track of all the Abes and Aarons that are incurred by multiple trips into the boxes; the characters, too, seem to be racing to keep up with themselves, trying to figure out where they need to be and what they need to do to keep going back in time.
Their motivation, of course, is greed; they gather stock tips and then jaunt backwards six hours and make wise investments. What they neglect to consider, at least at first, is that each of their doubles aren't doubles but future versions of themselves, and that as such their motivation will be exactly the same as their current (or past?) selves; they're presumably very much aware that there are minutely younger versions of them avoiding them, and that they need to look out for themselves. I was reminded slightly of the classic Calvin & Hobbes comic strip where Calvin duplicates himself inside one of his standard cardboard box invention so that he can get out of school and avoid his chores, and each duplicate in turn creates another duplicate for the very same reason.
There are the questions you'll ask yourself after the film is over; you really won't have much time while you're watching it. Carruth's dialogue is incredibly dense, and spoken by characters who know exactly what they're talking about and have no need to explain things to themselves, or to the audience. I have no idea if the science in this film is based in fact or logic, nor do I have any way of knowing; it all sounds real, and regardless, it's all over my head. The thrill of the film comes from trying to grab onto what little facets of information do make sense and piecing together from these clues what a more forgiving film would allot a specific line or two of dialogue, or even an entire scene.
Primer, obviously, is not in any way forgiving. As the story spins into darker and more duplicitous territory, you're almost given a choice: you can throw up your hands and give up, or you can apply yourself. Your reward won't be any great, meaningful denoument or clever twist ending, but the satisfaction that you've kept up with a film and filmmaker that seem to be gleefully daring you to give up. We've all seen too many indie films that practically plead for our affection. Carruth takes an opposite approach and, well, look what happened. He got the grand prize at Sundance.
Now, there are rumors that the award was a direct result of Peter Biskind's Down And Dirty Pictures, which was an unsparing indictment of Robert Redford's festival on charges of turning away from it's roots and embracing Hollywood. I honestly don't doubt that Biskind's book had at least something to do with Primer's unexpected success, but let's not get mired in cynicism; the thing to focus on is that this film deserved to win.
And hey, maybe it'll even start a trend.
That's it for this time; I'll write in again soon with something cool...until then...I'm outta here.
