Retrospectacle: Primer

At about the ten-minute mark of Primer, Shane Carruth’s directorial debut, we have a shot of our fledgling engineers/super best friends talking over their work as the camera lingers from the outside through windows in the garage door like some ineffectual voyeur. The camera, and we, are ineffectual in the sense that for the most part we have no idea what these people are doing or talking about. We are playing catch up as the film progresses and have to infer a lot of what isn’t being explicitly stated. This is true for the film at large.

The film stars Shane Carruth and David Sullivan as Aaron and Abe, engineers who inadvertently create a machine that makes time travel possible. What they do with the machine from there and how it works is part of the fun and a source of confusion through certain sections of the film as there is a refreshing (and somewhat maddening) lack of exposition to explain things to us as they happen. Things just happen and we are forced to think about things as they progress. This is a film that demands multiple viewings and in depth discussion, just like Carruth’s subsequent feature; this year’s Upstream Color.

Having seen this finally after I enjoyed Upstream Color so much, I can honestly say that Shane Carruth is a talent to be reckoned with and I cannot wait to see what he does next. It might be quite a wait, given the nine-year gap between Primer and Upstream Color, but if he continues to exert this much inventiveness into the writing, directing, editing and scoring of his subsequent films, those waits will not be in vain.

This movie may not be for most, especially considering the expectations that go along with this sub-genre of science fiction. It’s a very meticulously crafted way of telling this story that in no way bends to the normative rules of conventional cinema. This is no Back to the Future. Hell, this is no Looper either. This is a stripped down mind trip of a movie about two guys who stumble upon this technology told in the manner than lends it the most realism a topic like this can be handled in. Whether you are up for the ride merely depends on what you think of that premise.

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