Post by GP on Jun 28, 2007 18:45:18 GMT -5
Made for the insanely paltry sum of $7,000 by writer/director/cinematographer/composer/producer/star/editor Shane Carruth, ‘Primer’ won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2004 and the Alfred P. Sloane feature film prize at Sundance 2004. It makes sense that this was how the movie came into being, the creation of an auteur working with miniscule funds, as there is no chance in hell that a studio would ever bankroll something so unique. The plot of ‘Primer’ concerns the most intricate examination of temporal causality ever committed to film in fictional form. It’s confusing, infuriating and totally compelling.
Four young engineers and fledgling entrepreneurs pass their spare time building error-checking devices and are aware of being close to a leap of innovation. Two of the friends, Abe and Aaron, discover that the effects of a strange field generated by an experimental machine in Aaron’s garage provide the key to a limited time travel device. Unlike HG Wells’ time machine their device can only travel back to the time at which it was turned on and the user must spend as much time in the machine as they wish to go back. Abe and Aaron rapidly recognise the possibilities the machine affords them to make fortunes on the stock market but as they become more ambitious so they become more untrusting of each other’s intentions. The outcome is a befuddling, densely layered examination of causality and human frailty as greed becomes the overriding force behind Aaron’s increasingly calculated actions. The lack of budget ironically works in ‘Primer’s favour as the largely wooden acting genuinely conjures up the appearance of engineers stiffly discussing obscure concepts and the spare visual style concentrates the viewers’ attention on the dialogue, in which the majority of the detail lays.
At 77 minutes it stops short of inducing flashbacks to those mushroom fuelled philosophical debates of my youth yet still manages to plant a nagging doubt in the subconscious that maybe only stoners and cognitive gymnasts have the slightest chance of figuring out what the fuck happens in the last half hour. Fortunately for casualties like me the DVD comes with a director’s commentary.
If you fail to get past the first half hour with your brain intact then you may as well give up and go and watch ‘Timeline’ but if you persevere and get to the end you’ll find yourself watching it again and again as you attempt to answer the question for our age…
If Schrodinger’s cat had a time machine, might he not be in the box at all?