titlePrimer writer/directorShane Carruth year2004 gradeA
If you love science fiction, you'll love Primer. If you hate science fiction, you'll still love Primer.
Shane Carruth— the wunderkind writer/director/producer/casting director/editor/score composer and star of this Grand Jury Prize winning film from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival— made it after growing tired of the science-fiction genre's usual tropes and motifs. A purist, he wanted his sci-fi without the fantasy— fantasy that is so often tacked on as a means of glossing over gaps in scientific logic, or simply of making interesting an otherwise boring story. Asked about his inspiration for the film, Carruth replied, "[P]rototypes almost never include neon lights and chrome. I wanted to see a story play out that was more in line with the way real innovation takes place...."
Like Primer's heroes, Aaron (Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), had while making their machine, Carruth had many logistical impositions to consider as he made his film. With a budget of $7,000, Primer's gritty, un-fantastical aesthetic is almost as much necessity as artistic vision. However, necessity is the mother of invention— unable to rely on high-impact special effects like those of Star Trek (2009), and unwilling to dumb things down for his audience (looking at you, Back To The Future), Carruth tells a story of time travel in a brand new, and newly compelling way.
The story is not glamorous— Aaron and Abe's attempts to grapple with the paradoxes of their discovery, the temptations of power, and the unraveling of their once trusting friendship are handled with a dedramatized naturalism that roots their story firmly in our own world. This is not a parallel universe, or a premonitory futuristic fantasy. This is suburban Texas at the beginning of the 21st century; these are two guys in a garage whose lives just changed forever. Thus, Primer is characterized primarily by the psychological trajectories of Aaron and Abe. Thanks to the brilliantly understated performances by Carruth and Sullivan, the film's intimate glimpse into these two lives, in the midst of cataclysmic change, is intensely powerful. That the catalyst is the accidental invention of a time machine (as opposed to a death, or a love affair) becomes almost incidental in terms of the psychological drama.
Obviously, though, this is a science-fiction film. In terms of the narrative structure, and the tools available to the characters during their battles of will, their machine— called "The Box"— is nothing short of essential. Because Aaron and Abe are believably real people— trained engineers, yes, but not supernatural geniuses— they do not understand the full range, or the full degree, of the repercussions associated with using the Box. Having co-invented the Box, Abe and Aaron at first share all there is to know about its functioning and applications. Gradually, though, individual ambitions and desires lead the men to conceal new discoveries about the Box's capabilities. They begin to use the Box individually, without discussion, for their own purposes.
Exactly what those purposes are, and how Aaron and Abe go about achieving them, is tantalizingly obscured by the films utterly non-linear narrative structure. Imagine the deliciously complex task of deciphering what's going on in Memento (2000)— now toss in time travel: multiples of the same person, living and re-living the same moments. At any given time, you may be watching Aaron and Abe living a moment, instinctually, for the first time; or trying to live it for a second, without altering the causality; or for a third with the explicit intention of reshaping a future they have already seen. And who's doing the shaping? And for whom is this the first, second, or nth time around? Within even a seemingly linear sequence, jump cuts serve to destabilize temporal setting— leaving the question open as to how linear even several seconds of footage may be. The narrative is, in a word, inscrutable. However, being kept in the dark also keeps you on the edge of your seat.
In his review of this film, Mike D'Angelo writes, "Frankly, anybody who claims he fully understands what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar." And it's true. Carruth is so skillful at simultaneously conveying and obscuring the story that, viewing it for the first time, you may not even realize that events are disordered until the film's only semi-illuminating conclusion. But Primer is so exciting and so well-paced— not to mention, only 80 minutes long— that the necessity of repeat-viewings is nothing but a pleasure.
Watch it. Then watch it again.
(Here is an excellent formal analysis of the techniques employed in Primer. Don't read it until after you've seen the film at least once.)
