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by Jim Pappas Published: October 9, 2004
 Abe (David Sullivan) demonstrates to Aaron (Shane Carruth) a strange property of their invention in "Primer." There have been quite a few films, books and discussions about time travel, but has anyone actually considered that we would be much better off, and we are thankfully, without the science necessary to step into our owns pasts or futures? We would become trapped in an endless cycle of having to prepare our futures or pasts manually. We couldn't allow space and time to operate around us without consciously working to effect them. It would make our lives a living hell and a trap from which there is no escape. I think that first time director and writer and star (as Aaron) Shane Carruth has managed to demonstrate a more intuitive grasp of the realities of time travel with his film "Primer" than has any other film about the subject I can recall. This doesn't mean "Primer" is an especially good film, because there are many problems with it, but I have to applaud Carruth for trying to bring a sense of reality to the concept. The film opens with four young men at work in a garage attached to a suburban house. They are working on some device whose purpose is never explained, but it is apparent they have hopes that when completed the "box" will bring them financial rewards. They retire to the home's kitchen and while sitting around a table there they discuss marketing strategies and other business related aspects involving their invention. The members of the group all have regular day jobs, and are putting in long hours in their attempt to create something useful, and more importantly to them, profitable. What happens, ultimately, is that the device they created begins to demonstrate unexpected properties, and only two of the four are aware that what they've made is indeed something strange and compelling. The two who stumble across the mysterious results they get from operating the box are Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron. They decide to cut the other two out of the mix, and proceed to investigate what it is they've discovered about the box. It turns out that the magnetic field generated by the box has properties unlike any other: it effects space/time. Inside the field, time does not move in any normal way. They quickly realize they have a time machine on their hands, and Abe takes the next step by building a bigger box, one inside which he can fit himself. He manipulates the machine so that he travels into the past. He has to stay inside the box for a designated period of time, and when he emerges it is hours earlier than when he entered. The first thing Abe and Aaron try to do with their new found time machine is make money. They begin to play the stock market, and we assume they are making a fortune, but we are never given any details as to how much money they are making, or what they plan to do with it. Their lives become a series of segments in which they have to keep getting in and out of the box, and they have to keep making sure they don't encounter the duplicates of themselves who exist in another time line. The paradoxes keep mounting up, and they are continually having to address the issues raised by their time traveling. The story and what is actually happening becomes very fuzzy real fast, and that is my main complaint with "Primer." The audience is never quite sure what is going on as there is a lot of information left out of the narrative. Part of the story seems to be about an attempt to interrupt some unpleasant incident involving the girlfriend of Abe (Samantha Thomson as Rachel Granger) and her ex-boyfriend showing up at a party with a shotgun. We never find out if Abe and Aaron are successful at satisfactorily resolving whatever happens at the party, and we are never sure what it was they were trying to do about the incident anyway. The movie was made, it says in the press guide, for $7000 and that shows. There are no special effects or other bigger budget accoutrements in sight, and most of the action takes place in only a few locations, one of which is a pay for storage facility where they've set up the time travel boxes (they each have one for themselves, eventually). I think Carruth made a mistake by not spending a few more dollars for some extra scenes, scenes in which a more clear explanation of what is going on in the film could have helped "Primer" seem a bit less murky. Part of me wants to give this film a higher rating than I'm going to give it because I like the fact that Carruth is making an honest effort at dealing with time travel in about as realistic a way as possible, but the execution of his idea is just not sufficiently entertaining or straightforward for me to do so. Overall Rating: C+ |
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