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Primer (2004)

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228 comments in total

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159 out of 184 people found the following comment useful :-
No Maps for These Territories, 9 October 2004

Author: Quicksand from Dallas, TX

It's not easy to follow. The production values aren't perfect. There's not an obvious 'good guy' or 'bad guy.' But was this movie any good? Oh hell yes.

This movie has been compared to "2001" because of the sci-fi angle. But while the movie has one sci-fi element in it (the device), the movie isn't even about that. It's about these two guys, and how it affects them individually, and their relationship with one another.

I found this movie to be fairly challenging, but worth the ride. I was up for hours discussing this movie with friends, and if that's not what you like to do with your movies, then this one probably isn't for you. But if you like something that tweaks your brain, that you can watch repeated times, that you can really chew on... then here comes "Primer," like a ghost in the night.

It's too early to tell where this movie will reside in cinematic history-- revered, forgotten, or somewhere in between-- but it's already won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (where it beat out 'Garden State'), and just won't go away. It moves along, it's clever, it held my attention. Even "Pi" didn't do that, and if you're a film nerd, that's saying something.

If you're not a film nerd, approach this one with more caution. Remember, Shane Carruth had no idea even how to make a movie when he started making this one, but the end result is something far more fascinating than your typical film-school snob could ever put together. This is wholly original, and took me someplace I have never been. And that alone makes the "2001" comparison start to look more and more accurate.....

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157 out of 183 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautifully Flawed, 8 December 2004

Author: flat6 from Toronto

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Here's the gist of it: as another review has said, 'the script is riddled with problems, about 60% of the movie is out of focus, the audio is muffled and garbled, and continuity problems abound'. All these things are true. Yet despite all appearances, this does not amount to a bad movie. It just makes Primer a exquisitely different movie, and furthermore, a movie that works.

The reason to love it is that it's utterly defiant of the expectations of the traditional movie experience. It can't resort to a beautiful cast, shiny special effects, gorgeous scenery. Indeed, the cast is wooden in its acting, which turns out to work because that's how normal scientists and engineers (and people in general) are, flawed communicators. The settings are drab, out of focus, rushed and cheap, which turns out to work because that's what being efficient with your resources means for an inventor. It doesn't matter if the makers of Primer were forced into this style by their budget (as opposed to consciously 'pulling off' this look and feel). All that matters is that in the end, it turns out to work beautifully with the plot and the story.

What this means is that it has nothing to go on except its wits. And wits it does have. This is not to say that it's coherent… you will be confused by the fact that the plot doesn't nicely clean up after itself. There is no nice take-home message, no all-knowing schemework. But it is an intellectually respectable, honest attempt at dealing with the paradoxes of time travel. I've never seen any major flick that throws up its hands in the complexity of it all and just admits there's only so far you can look into things – most movies you'll see gloss over the issues with some bad science, or worse, simply don't ask the questions.

It's entertainment that's intellectually honest and respectable, and that's a tremendously rare thing.

9/10

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101 out of 127 people found the following comment useful :-
Incredible, 13 June 2004
Author: ChrisC_ATL from Atlanta, GA, USA

You remember the first time you saw The Matrix (please, not the awful sequels) and you could barely keep up with what was going on, trying to piece together the pieces of what you were being told into a coherent story?

This movie was exactly like that. The first half or so is fairly linear (despite the frenzied Altman-esque style of everyone talking on top of each other), but then it gets WEIRD and it just absolutely blew me away. This film won a major Sundance award, and normally that means I won't like it (especially the normally pandering audience award winners) but this movie, and first-time filmmaker Shane Carruth, deserves absolutely everything it gets. I am just blown away.

Did you like Pi? If so, go see this one.

By the way, the attention to detail in the beginning is great. Often in thrillers with technical content, if you have a technical education you have consciously ignore all the stupid movie crud that they pull to make it into a good story. But this movie pulls off an incredibly believable technical story, with only a few distracting gaffs. That is, the tech jargon is good enough that you don't get distracted and can focus on the story line.

Final comment: Yes, it is very hard to follow the story line in this movie.

Obviously I'm not going to spoil it, but I think the following fact will help when the movie gets kind of hairy towards the end: Aaron is the dark-haired guy, Abe is the blond-haired guy.

This movie now has distribution and you should keep an eye out for it in the fall.

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60 out of 64 people found the following comment useful :-
Confusing but it makes perfect sense, 9 June 2005

Author: Jonathan Cressman from Sunnyvale, California

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Partial explanation Only for those who have seen the movie.

The movie is shown completely linearly from Abe's perspective. (Abe's the blond one.) I'm sure most people can follow the move up until the scene in the garage where Philip and Robert explain to Abe that Rachell's ex boy friend showed up at the Robert's party with a shot gun.

Things get strange at this point because Aaron and Abe are now planning to stop the ex boy friend, an event that from regular time has already happened but we are viewing the movie from Abe's perspective and he hasn't gone to the party yet. Also at the time of the garage scene Abe doesn't yet know that Aaron used the failsafe machine to change the events at the party.

When Abe shows up at the fail safe machine it isn't the one he left running but the one that Arron had taken back in time inside the first fail safe machine. When Abe goes back in time he meets Arron who already knows what Abe was going to say because he's also gone back in time.

Abe knocks his past self out with the NO2 while Arron drugs his own breakfast milk.

At this point they are changing their own past. They don't play the stock market so they aren't rich at the end of the movie.

Aaron's been recording all the conversations that he hears through the ear piece so he's ready the second time that Abe comes to explain that they have built a time machine, only the second time Abe has also come back in time.

We will never know what would have happened at the party if Aaron and Abe hadn't used the time machine to change the events at the party because those events never happen. We do know that Abe tells Rachel's father the venture capitalist about the time machine and he uses it. That's why he has a couple days worth of beard growth.

Aaron goes though the days several times and even meets himself and gets in a fight with himself.

Now all you have to do is watch it another 3 times to confirm what I just wrote.

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67 out of 85 people found the following comment useful :-
A film for the days when science fiction was about wrestling with ideas . . ., 24 August 2004

Author: Chris Docker (eyeforfilm) from Scotland, United Kingdom

A group of young scientists work at a frantic pace to invent they are not quite sure what, but their efforts start demonstrating interesting side effects. From their work in a small cottage industry of error checking devices they are forced to confront the fact that they have discovered something too valuable to market. As they explore the potential of their machine, they are caught in a frantic loop to second guess themselves.

Science fiction in the cinema has largely been dominated by the visual impact, and so this is a welcome (for some) return to the world of ideas. This is not an easy-rise entertainment film but one where you have to concentrate to keep up, working out the logical implications of what's happening. If made on the scale of Men in Black or the Matrix it would descend to the level of spoof – as it is we follow the two main characters knowing that their actions are having momentous effects on the world around them and on themselves. Instead of flashy graphics, we are left to keep the ramifications of the story in mind as the characters themselves grapple with what they know is happening but can't even let themselves look at directly.

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69 out of 104 people found the following comment useful :-
Fun scifi romp done on a budget!, 8 October 2004

Author: Samualt from Earth

No spoilers. I just saw this and thought it was great. It beats Hollywood films because it portrays science in a believable way. The acting was also good and very believable. Shane Carruth did a fine job as writer, director, and actor. I give it an A+.

Film Quality: The lighting and focus weren't always perfect but neither are most big budget films. I loved that you could at least hear everything they were saying in this film unlike most big Hollywood flicks where they ruin it with orchestra music and background noise (I have no idea what Tom Cruise said at the end of Collateral and I doubt anyone else does either.) Primer does an excellent job with film quality, especially considering their small budget. I found this film very watchable.

Story and Plot Quality: The story and plot are also good, but it does get a little convoluted by the end so I was somewhat lost when I left the theater. I think I understood all but the last 15 minutes. Personally, I think the director purposely made the end hard to follow so people might go see it again. I think a simple 2 minute narrative would have filled in all the gaps. A few segues (transition scenes) also could have been a little clearer. I find that I'm still figuring things out many hours later. Perhaps it was bad editing, but more likely a directors trick to make you think and possibly see it again. I would have done a few things different with editing, which is my biggest gripe here.

Who should see it: It isn't really a movie for the family. Take an enlightened friend or perhaps a date if that person has an open mind. The first half of the movie is there just to give background and make you believe that they could build such a machine. Children and old people aren't going to like this one because it doesn't have a lot of whiz-bang type stuff in it (No eye candy for the mentally challenged or immature.) Special effects are scarce, but really aren't needed in this intellectual thriller.

Rating: I rated this movie 10/10, but I was considering it's genre also. A budget scifi with lots of intellectual intrigue. If your looking for childish, comical, Hollywood whiz-bang type crap then go rent "Back To The Future" instead. I think Primer will sort out the men from the boys here!

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51 out of 69 people found the following comment useful :-
From Tinkering with Tools to Tinkering with People, 15 October 2004
Author: noralee from Queens, NY

"Primer" starts out innocently like a "Start-up.com" docu-drama and the first part covers some of those same financial, friendship and entrepreneurial issues as computer geek engineers work out of of one of the partner's garage to perfect an invention.

But gradually, in this antiseptic atmosphere of white shirts, electrical experiments and tweaking mechanics, every human emotion, virtually as every seven deadly sin, except sloth, and beyond, starting with greed, takes them over.

Without any explanation to the audience, we gradually figure out that we're seeing a cleverer, low budget "Paycheck" or what "Ground Hog Day" played for laughs and an original "Outer Limits" episode did for irony (I didn't see "The Butterfly Effect" to see how it also dealt with time changes).

Rather this is an attempt to seriously examine the philosophical issues of chaos theory and how inventions can't be divorced from human frailties, both mental and physical.

Shane Carruth, as the lead actor/writer/director/producer is a true auteur--and could therefore give his nerd a wife and kid-- but perhaps an outside editor could have helped make the permutations a bit clearer as I didn't quite follow the intersections with outside characters. I followed enough to get caught up in the anxiety and suspense of each iteration.

It was amusing that I was the only woman in the audience.

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35 out of 45 people found the following comment useful :-
Intoxicating science-fiction, 1 May 2005

Author: kobe05 from Australia

Never before have I felt so compelled to re-watch a movie within 48 hours of initial viewing. This mindf$%# of a movie demands exactly that. If you are up for a challenge, I recommend you view this film... research it a little (not too much)... watch it again, and then go read the forums at primermovie.com - but importantly, do not go there before watching it at least twice in my opinion. It's amazing what can be done with only $7,000 - in comparison to what others do with $200,000,000. This is science-fiction at its purest and I really hope it gets a wider release and receives the attention it deserves. Contagiously brilliant, and as close to perfect as a film of it's ilk can get. 10/10

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44 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
Awesome time travel movie, 2 June 2004

Author: Kevin Futhey (kevinfuthey@hotmail.com) from Seattle, WA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Shane Carruth made this movie for $7000. In doing so, he proves movies don't need big bucks to be cool.

I just saw this here in Seattle, where it played for the first time since Sundance. Carruth, the writer/director/lead actor was present for Q&A afterwards. I totally enjoyed it.

The movie is about some friends who, in their off-time, develop new technologies in their garage. They accidentally discover that one of their inventions can actually send objects (including people, after they make one big enough) back in time by several hours.

This is a clever, at times very funny, and realistic look at what people would do if given the ability to travel back in time. Without doubt the best time-travel movie I've seen.

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26 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
What's worse, thinking you're being paranoid or knowing you should be?, 28 September 2005

Author: plastichandgun from Canada

It is rare to find a truly engrossing science fiction film these days. With every film depending more and more on special effects, there are very few sci-fi films influenced by sparse classics like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972). Though, I suppose, even back then, there was a 4 year wait in between. Aranofsky's Pi is a film I would put in the same class of science fiction as the two aforementioned films, as well as Tetsuo: The Iron Man, in which Pi was heavily influenced by. And now, Primer, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, is another brilliant film that fits nicely into that category.

Primer is mind-bending to the highest degree. The film is packed with esoteric dialogue, mostly between the protagonists Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan). From what I can tell, the film is set during the present time, and the lack of special effects makes everything seem eerily possible. Also, the way the characters cut each other off mid-sentence, something not seem very often in films, adds to the realism of the technical dialogue.

As you can see from the credit listings above, Shane Carruth almost single-handedly made this film, and, as if that's not enough, it was made for a paltry $7,000. The camera-work is reminiscent of Pi and Memento. Its abrasive style perfectly fits the mood and atmosphere of the world within the film. Carruth also realizes the importance and functionality of coloured filters and uses them remarkably.

I believe that's it best to go into this film not knowing too much about it. If you're interested in dialogue-driven science fiction, quantum physics and causality, this is the perfect film for you. Shane Carruth has made an incredible achievement on a shoestring budget. Primer should undoubtedly become a classic and a film that will be often imitated. The intricately twisted time-line will leave you with more questions than answers at the end of the film, so prepare to watch this 2 or 3 times over to grasp everything. Or, at least, pretend to grasp it.

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