2 - Primer (2004)

Mike D'Angelo of Esquire stated in his review of Primer (2004): "Anybody who claims they fully understand what’s going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar."

I'm not a savant nor a liar, so I'll admit that this film played games with me, fascinated me, left me confused, and I look forward to seeing it a second time.

This science-fiction film is a fascinating puzzle--literally an enigma within an enigma. Four scientist friends are working in their spare time in the garage of one of their tract houses on an invention. Their jargon filled dialog is difficult to follow but it sets the tone for this believable scientific endeavor.

As the film unfolds two of them (Shane Carruth as Aaron and David Sulliivan as Abe) begin to branch off and eventually stumble upon a method to time-travel through a small metal box. Blonde unmarried Abe comes to see Aaron one day and tells him that he has something to show him. They park near a large storage building and as they watch Abe's time traveling duplicate comes out of the building. As soon as we see him, Abe occupying two spaces in the same time, we realize that conventional chronology and linear plotting has just disappeared.

Here's the way the time travel works from Wikipedia:

By the end of the film, we are totally uncertain whether we are watching the originals or their time traveling duplicates. (For if one can constantly time travel back and forth, how many duplicates might exist? And when we learn there is another larger travel box, what implications are there? And what about the concept of death if one can always retreat to the box?)

Director-writer-composer-producer-editor Carruth has said that his intention with the film was to document the break-down of the two main characters' friendship as they confront the ethical issues of manipulating the future and making one's fortune.In an interview with Carruth on www.indiewire.com, Carruth explains the title and the purpose:

First thing, I saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but ethically, morons. They never had any reasons before to have ethical questions. So when they're hit with this device they're blindsided by it. The first thing they do is make money with it. They're not talking about the ethics of altering your former self. So to me, they're kids, they're like prep school kids basically. To call it a primer or a lesson was the easy way to go. And then there's also this power they have in using the device is something almost worse then death. To put someone else in the position where they're not sure they're in control of anything. They're not in the front of the line anymore and they're living in someone's past, to be secondary in that world. The thing that is most important is to feel like you're at the front of the line, to be prime or primer. I definitely never wanted to say that in the film, but that's where it comes from.

This Indie film is well-worth watching a couple of times and allowing the philosophical concepts to sink in, just as the ideas in Looper capture us.

Primer (2004) ****