Tom's Media Scrapbook

Dir. Shane Carruth
Year: 2004
Cert: 12

imdb link

Four young scientists make a living working for an unnamed large corporation. By night they collaborate on personal projects and side-businesses in a garage. Two of them: Aaron and Abe, accidentally produce a primitive form of time travel and get lost in an increasingly complex realm of murky ethics, duplicity and splintering time lines.

Shane Carruth put multi-tasking director Rodriguez to shame when he wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored, photographed (you get the idea) Primer for $7000. The most pleasant surprise? It doesn’t show. Not bad for a film that spends an unhealthy chunk of its running time showing nerdy men arguing physics.

Primer doesn’t care about exposition and character development, it runs head first into its world and dares the audience to keep up. On first viewing, the disorienting opening scenes filled with bewildering scientific jargon make it practically unfathomable to the average viewer to decipher what the heck they’re actually inventing in the first place.

Then time travel comes into play. This is probably the films best part, with plot and character both largely in focus as we learn how the duo can travel back in time for as long as they are in the machine allowing them to relive the same day multiple times. As we enter the third act Carruth’s direction struggles to keep up with the ambition of his script and potentially major revelations are quickly swept aside or left infuriatingly unexplored, clearly the directors intention was to demonstrate the way the men keep going back and preventing events before they can register any significant effects but some plot points crop up (before being ignored) threaten to give the picture the emotional core it sorely needs. For example, the pair use their new-found ability to play the stock market but we never see any evidence of their wealth, after one trip Aaron begins to bleed from the ear but this is never mentioned again. But in another sense you have to wonder if this is the point. Carruth uses his cinematic canvas to talk about a dizzying array of ideas and potential, by only spending small amounts of time on each concept he allows the viewers imagination to run riot with the possibilities. There’s enough here for 5 two hour films.

Budgetary considerations aside, Primer has a sharp and convincing palette, shot only in a small number of locations: a garage, an office, a storage facility, a field. The unassuming hand-made aesthetic enhances the experience, a convincing portrayal of the way earth changing discoveries really happen, not a grand scale heroic unveiling but rather an unexpected side-effect of a sociopath tinkering with machinery in the workspace of his mother’s basement.

It is worth noting that Carruth is a mathematician. And that’s what Primer feels like, not a film in the conventional sense but a cold-hearted numerical equation explored via cinema. Many, many people will not get on with the film and this I totally understand. It never became a Donnie Darko sized hit because there was no chance a wide audience could identify with it. The film is more puzzle-box than story and for every moment I enjoyed there is another that makes me realize the importance of narrative legibility and how this film would be improved if it took a more relaxed pace with its plot (this is a lot for 70 minutes to handle)

I know this review has been largely negative, but I liked Primer. I admired its bravery, the way it strives to do its own thing and be different. Its purity, a curse, is also a thing of rare beauty in modern film. Its an intriguingly complex piece of work. A brave equation on a black board waiting to be solved. We can’t all be the janitor with the bold mathematical mind that fills in the blanks but I for one am happy to sit back and admire the conundrum.

4 stars (out of 5)