This ultralow-budget time-travel movie left me scratching my head. Walk me through it, please. What happened, exactly?
This timeline should help you be more baffled. I’ve only seen it once, and I think I really only picked up about 10% of what went on.
Um… OK, so now I’m even more confused. So the boxes sent them into the future, but then returned them to the “present,” but sometimes they got out at different intervals? And there were EIGHT timelines by the end?
Too bad there’s not a headscratching smilie. :smack:
I had to watch Primer three times before it began to make sense. It’s got to be one of the most elaborate time-travel movies ever (and also one of the best movies ever made on a shoestring budget).
This movie is awesome. One of the best time travel movies ever made, and done entirely without special effects. Basically, just dialogue. Awesome movie.
Saw this in the theater followed by a discussion with the director. Haven’t seen it since that screening, nor have I particularly wanted to. It’s an interesting exercise in stretching your film-making dollar as far as possible, but not particularly compelling storytelling.
They shot on film using “ends”, the short bits of unexposed film left on the roll by bigger budget movies. The lab knows how much of each roll of film was exposed and trims the film before developing it. They set aside the rolls and sell them or give them to students or budget-strapped film-makers. The Primer crew wrote the script to fit each scene to the lengths of film available. Because film was expensive and the labor of the actors was cheap or free, they rehearsed each scene over and over, and when they had it as good as it was going to get, they rolled film. From what I remember, every shot but one was a first and only take.
As bad as digital video can look on film, this is a film that should have been shot on video. Then, the could have cut together a more coherent film and gotten more takes or explored more ideas. Or been able to afford more than one set. Or been able to do something about the over-exposed scenes.
+1. There are a few threads on this here on the SDMB and you can search the web for analysis. Bottom line - it is a great movie, bears up very well to multiple viewings and makes its own kind of sense in terms of how the various time strands overlap into each other…
I saw it a few days ago. It gave me a headache just trying to follow the dialogue. IMO making a movie that no one understands even on repeated viewings doesn’t make you deep or philosophical or cool. It makes you a bit of an ass. In other words, I hated it. (However, if it were a book, I suspect I would really enjoy it.)
I found passing references to it (mostly people praising it in IMHO threads), but no explanations. The Wiki article has some useful links, but I’m still not sure I understand it. I should probably see it again. Or maybe I have…? 
Well, some of it isn’t supposed to make sense, because it doesn’t make sense to the characters at that point anymore. Time lines are getting too confused and stuff is going on that nobody, including the two guys, understands or knows about.
Not only are the characters in the dark, but the author is, too. There is an event in the middle of the film that the writer has stated has no explanation; there is no cause for the effect, and trying to fanwank a cause, while an enjoyable exercise, is ultimately pointless. The author himself claims that the ‘meaning’ of the event is not just unknown, but unknowable.
Oh, and the movie is HAWSOME!
Yeah, that’s when we really went down the rabbit hole and thought it had gone completely over our heads, and then later hit the commentary track about it and realized that it was indeed on purpose.
What event is that? Finding the people lying on the driveway one night? I’m still scratching my head about that.
That weird chase thing with the dad guy and the people in the driveway, yes. It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but that’s where it took a serious left turn for weird. Appropriately. The whole movie impressed the hell out of me, and unlike similar movies (Memento, for example) it stands up to thought and further viewing. It isn’t for everybody, though.