Tell me why I should like Primer.

Cafe Society
1

Years ago, I remember seeing this movie on On Demand (IFC), I think I got about 30min into it before I turned it off. I mean I know they had a limited budget to work with but geez, these guys seemed so amateurish. Talking over each other, muffled audio. etc…And when I saw their “Time Machine” sitting in that guy’s garage I LOL’d.

Now I’m thinking about giving this movie another shot. Word on the street is that despite its faults, this movie has a net gain of awesome. Yet nobody has articulated to me as to why it is awesome.

I vaguely remember someone telling me the attention to the science aspect of it is pretty solid. At least as solid as one can get with regards to time travel. Any truth to that?

2

I watched it a week or so ago. Total waste of time. After it had finished, we were still puzzled about some stuff and found a very useful flow chart thingie on the 'net that helped make sense of it all. Still wouldn’t recommend it as anything more than an aid to getting to sleep.

3

It only gets more confusing, especially near the end.

4

We’ve had a discussion of this on the Board, and you can find detailed dissections of the plot and the probable timeline at various internet sites (don’t use the plot from XKCD – he just has a confused squiggle. Which is the point), but I don’t think there’s anything particularly deep, meaningful, or significantly interesting.

The real draw for a lot of people was the fact that an amateur production could succeed and look so good, with such high production values. You didn’t need the big Hollywood juggernaut behind you to crank out a science fiction film anymore, which meant that we could finally get some good SF that wasn’t beholden to the ignorance of the multitudes and the pandering proclivities of Hollywood studio chiefs.
Exvcept that the story is, in my opinion (and those of an awful lot of othersm, apparently), not particularly well told, and remains awfully murky, and requires multiple viewings to make any sense. (I’m not against muliople viewings, and of filmmakers putting lots of mateeial into films so that you do get more out of it the more you watch it, but if you have to see it two or three times to nunderstand even the basics of what’s going on, I think you’ve gfailed as a filmmaker.
YMMV

5

I liked the time travel paradigm they used. But, I agree that most of it was confusing. And I think that may be why some people like it. You have to think about it and figure it out. But, once that’s done, I agree that it’s not that great.

6

It’s not very good. The fact that it’s indie doesn’t make up for it’s failings to the extent a some people think it does.

7

I TiVo’d it a few years ago off of IFC. I did enjoy it, because I could rewind as often as I wanted mid-showing, to help me keep track. It did get a little slow towards the end, when I no longer felt like rewinding to help it all make sense.

The complexity, the muffled audio, the whole indie feel improved it for me. I really felt like I could relate – these people have made an important discovery in their garage-based, circuit-board making, home-brewed materials science/nanotech facility. Maybe that’s too far-fetched, but some people do work hard on complex tasks in their garage – its sort of an American-dream type thing. You wouldn’t have expected Hank Hill to have traveled in time, but you can acknowledge the dedication leading to impressive results – that’s the sort of thing.

This was very similar to the vibe I got from The Blair Witch Project. On the face of it it seems fairly plausible, kids camping making a documentary, complete with low-budgetness to make it more “real” feeling, at least for me. By the time weird shit starts happening, you’re already invested. Then, the weirdness drags on for too long, and you snap out of both trances. But in the end, in both movies, you get another twist, and you get the feeling of – finally – done. Still a fairly nicely crafted ride.

I was mentioning bits of the plot to some people at work, and somebody went and spoiled the ending, it seems the final plot twist is directly taken from a Heinlein short story. So, if you like classic sci-fi, well, Primer is just one of those, filmed.

I’m thinking Cabin in the Woods may be similar in the way the plot advances, but I haven’t seen that yet. If so, perhaps the old classic sci-fi Cube from 1997 did it right – it didn’t try to be too real, just kept being weird, and short in duration.

8

I liked it. The point is that it’s confusing. Because it’s time travel. After a while if you were actually time traveling in real life you’d lose your freaking mind and you’d get things happening that made no sense at all whatsoever and you wouldn’t be able to figure out where other people were coming from or what they were talking about it. That’s why there’s some real WTF maybe two thirds in.

9

I saw it last weekend and was thoroughly bored. It wasn’t just that the time travel aspect was confusing, I was prepared for that and that’s not what bothered me. It’s that the actual *story *aspect was very poorly done and confusing, and half the dialogue is so low you can barely understand anything they are saying.

I mean things like, I had no idea what the whole party was about, who the girl there was, and what they were actually going back in time to do! Is she one of their wives? Ex-girlfriends? I couldn’t even remember the names of which guy was which.

10

Something to look forward to :slight_smile:

11

Tip: Watch it with the director’s commentary track on. Not because it makes the plot make any more sense, but because hearing about how the movie was made is actually really interesting.

12

I watched this show several times, because I was convinced that I just didn’t understand something, or was missing the Thing that would make it all make sense. Finally I gave up. I really wanted to understand it, and it just never came together for me. The director’s commentary was interesting, though.

13

I thought that conceptually there were some interesting ideas and that while I give the guys two thumbs up for improvisation and recycling attitudes, the end result is neither engaging nor satisfying.

edit: My perception may be colored by the fact that I was made to watch it by possibly one of the most pretentious english majors I have ever known.

14

Honestly, I never found the time travel aspect that confusing. I was more confused by everything else that happened up to the time travel. I didn’t know what those guys were doing originally or what they were trying to build.

15

Primer is the best time travel movie ever and one of the best science fiction films of all time, IMO.

And yes, one of the things that’s best about it is it’s use of a “show don’t tell” narrative style.

For those who’ve never heard the term before, it means that there is little to no expository content; it’s up to the viewer to put things together and into context.

Imagine if you a 12th century CE person suddenly brought forth into today’s world, but wearing contemporary clothes, etc. You’re a part of a group having a discussion about yesterday’s events. There will be all kinds of jargon, cultural references, activities, etc. being talked about that you won’t have reference points for, even tho you understand most of the words you are hearing. You can’t ask what someone means when they talk about “the internet” or “mortgage payments” or “sick days” or “empowerment” or a host of other things without drawing unwanted attention to yourself, so your forced to “catch up” as best you can by logical deduction and inference. And as your guesses and assumptions prove correct, you are slowly able to understand and participate in what’s going on around you.

That’s how Primer is told, and it’s done brilliantly. The film becomes more complex and the storyline(s) become more entangled (and enmeshed) as you are able to provide context for events, understand relationships, etc. I’ve watched this film well over 40 times and seem to come away with some other insight. It’s a fantastic achievement in terms of storytelling and narrative structure, and the fact that it was made for $7000 isn’t necessarily part of the appeal of the film as a film, but more as confirmation that oodles of money are not a requirement for good stories to be told well.

16

There are movies that are confusing because they don’t actually make any sense at all, and then there are movies that are confusing because they are complicated and there is missing information (but where the underlying structure/universe is logical and consistent). Primer is an example of the latter.

I enjoy these types of films because thinking through them makes them more coherent, not less (as compared to many movies where the entire premise falls apart if you think about it too hard). It’s confusing, but in the same way that math or physics is confusing–eventually it makes sense and you’re rewarded with the new thing you’ve learned.

17

The company was originally in the business of building JTAG cards. This was mentioned obliquely in the dialog, but it caught my attention because a) it established immediate credibility for me that the filmmakers knew their way around technology (most self-professed nerds couldn’t even tell you what a JTAG card is), and b) it demonstrated early on that we shouldn’t expect a lot of exposition from this film. It requires a lot of attention from the audience, and I think this is a big reason for the film’s appeal. It’s like watching a puzzle being simultaneously built and torn apart before your eyes.

18

I recently came across Top 50 modern day low budget movies and decided I would check out those I haven’t seen, because I like all the ones I have. Primer is featured and the review says:

With the confirmation here it looks like an interesting viewing experience.

19

I watched Primer a few days ago. I absolutely couldn’t follow the plot completely, but I think that’s kind of the point.

The parts where they talk over each other actually seem like natural conversation to me. Also, if you only saw 30 minutes of the movie, I don’t think you actually saw the time machine. The side project they’re working on, which you saw in the garage, was meant to reduce the weight of objects on/in it.

Also, I think it’s kind of silly to buy into a movie about time machines, but scoff at the idea that it could have been assembled in someone’s garage. It’s really not unusual for people like that to work on their hobbies or startups in conditions like that.

20

Good lord I love this movie. Can’t say I’m surprised to see the negative reviews - using Bo’s lingo, it’s “Show Don’t Tell” approach requires a willingness to go with it.

I thought it was a perfect sci-fi short story of a movie.

Okay - why?

  • I don’t know about the “science” per se, but the way these entrepreneurs slowly realize there’s more to their discovery feels real, along with how they end up isolating themselves and digging into what they discover.

  • It is a great Star Trek / Twilight Zone use of sci-fi - where a tech discovery is used as a plot device to explore questions of humanity, ambition, ethics and morals.

  • The messiness of the time looping - it worked for me in that it was, well, messy. It worked with the intent of the movie as the characters got in over their heads. It reminded me of Goodfellas, where Scoresese changes the look of the film as Henry Hill becomes a whacked-out coke addict.

  • The fact that it was made for $7,000 and worked they way it did - well for me and other fans - lurks in the background and keeps a Wow factor present. The music - and how Shane Carruth wrote it, and consciously evolved how the music sounded as the plot played out - it’s impressive on a basic film-scoring level, for instance…