This is reputed to be a fiendishly complicated time-travel film. "How complicated can it be?" we thought. Well, too fucking complicated, that's how. To the extent that we had to watch a 20+ minute YouTube explanation (Thanks, LondonCityGirl!) to have some semblance of an understanding of what we'd just seen. The more I think about this movie (which, to be clear, is an amazing achievement given that it cost $7,000 to make) the more peevish I get. It's a classic example of someone using superficial clever-cleverness to hide fundamental flaws (reminds me of several people I knew in grad school). Here's the outline of the plot: two engineers accidentally invent a time machine (first peeve: the first evidence they have that they've invented a time machine is that a fungus called "aspergillus ticor" to be found inside secretes a protein at a massively faster rate (in hours what it should take months to do). This does NOT prove that they can travel back in time, which is what they then proceed to do. Anyway, the machine works like this: you turn it on at the time you want to return to. Then, having turned it on, you go and hide away in a hotel room, because once you use it, another version of you will be popping out of there (in fact, that's another problem: as they turn it on, a version of them should pop out right in front of them). But then, weirdly, you leave the hotel room and go to a library to see what stocks have massively improved over the course of the day. Armed with this knowledge (and some canisters of oxygen, because apparently it's pretty nasty inside that very cramped time machine) you go back to the machine in the evening of the day you turned it on, and get in it. It then takes exactly the time inside the machine to return to the point you turned it on (so it's best to take something so you sleep - also it's pretty uncomfortable, and it appears to have unpleasant side-effects, including making your handwriting look appalling), at which point you pop out and immediately go buy stocks. So, if you think about it, there are three of you for the six hours between the 9 AM you turn it on and the 3 PM you enter it: the original hotel-room-then-library version, the version who has traveled back with the stock knowledge, and the version traveling backwards inside the machine. But really (and this is something the movie gets completely wrong) there is only one of you, with a loop-the-loop personal timeline. Later, when (inevitably) different "versions" of each of our protagonists (fair-haired Abe and dark-haired Aaron (who is also the writer, director and composer, and all-around megalomaniac, Shane Carruth)
run into each other, it is actually different stages of the same person. Anyway, the enrichment plan works fine for a couple of days until things are complicated by a party in which a girl called Rachel (whom Abe has been wooing, largely because her father is a rich venture capitalist) is attacked by a shotgun-wielding ex, whom Aaron invited to the party, and Aaron intervenes. But did he do enough? Later on, while pursuing another plot point - punching a former boss who got rich off their ideas in the nose, the two encounter Rachel's father who has apparently managed to time-travel, presumably because Rachel's boyfriend comes back and finishes the job. This prompts Abe to want to use his failsafe device, which he turned on 4 hours before the first turning-on of the original time machine, which means he can use it to return before the whole mess gets started and stop himself ever time traveling. (But of course, really, we know he must fail, because when he set up the failsafe device, a version of him did NOT immediately pop out and stop him. (Another complaint: Aaron finds out about Abe's failsafe device and travels back to it and constructs another failsafe device at the same time. But how? Did he put another time machine inside the time machine? Because he couldn't construct a new one instantaneously, which is what would be required to have a duplicate failsafe device that also turns on at 5 AM. Also, given that Aaron used the original failsafe device, isn't he already in it when Abe comes to use it?) But Abe and Aaron have already discovered (because of a cell phone plot point) that the past can be changed, so...) Anyway, our two friends have a falling out, Abe is determined to do all he can to block any time travel, while Aaron (at least one version of him) travels off to some distant country where they speak French and is seen having a giant version of the time machine built...
Overall, a fun, if impossible (see also Looper and Back to the Future) conceit, that deserves a much higher budget remake so that we could actually see duplicates interact, and we might actually understand what the fuck is happening. As it is, the film is like caviar or oysters - expensive and disgusting food that people convince themselves must be good because it's so hard to get. (And why's it called "Primer"? Your guess is as good as mine.) I've got to stop thinking about it, because every time I do I think of a new problem. I mean, don't get me started on the whole thing of the wife thinking there are rats in the attic when really it's her husband's double, who apparently can't make more noise than a rat, even though he's wrongfully imprisoned. This movie is a first draft of a first draft. It should have been the movie that you make for $7000 as a proof of concept so that a studio funds the big budget proper version. That doesn't co-star the writer/director (although Abe can stay - he's pretty good).
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