"Primer"

“Man, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.”

This was my favorite line from the movie “Primer”; it’s everything the movie tried to be: clever, but subtle.  It’s a different sort of time travel story, but, while concept behind the story is original, the way it’s told falls flat.

Time Travel stories are as different as snowflakes; but what defines the challenges within the story falls to two questions: how do we travel through time, and, more importantly, what effect do we have on the time and place we’ve come to and to ourselves when we try to change things in the past?
The answer to the former question typically has one of three possibilities: 1) by accident / don’t know (“Army of Darkness”, “Groundhog Day”, “Time Traveler’s Wife”); 2) by force of will (“Somewhere In Time”, “Butterfly Effect”); 3) through some sort of device (“Back to the Future”, “Timeline”).  The issue with the second possibility is “how do we invoke our will to travel?”  The issue created with having a device is “what do we do if the device breaks while we’re in another time?”  The real question at the root of all of these is “How do we get home?”.

The answer to the latter question is (typically) one of four possibilities: 1) we can’t change anything, and, even if we change things, time and history move on around us (“The Time Machine”); 2) we can change things, but, in trying to change certain events, we end up causing the outcome we sought to alter (“12 Monkeys”); 3) we need to be extremely careful what we change, because changing even the smallest change in the past could lead to drastic changes to the future (most time travel stories, including “Back to the Future”, “Butterfly Effect” and “Looper”); and 4) we can change anything we want, because our very presence in the past has created an alternate universe, so we will not be affected by any changes we make (JJ Abrams “Star Trek”).

There is a third question which I didn’t approach, because it’s not usually addressed in time travel stories, which is “If you travel back closely enough within your own life, what would happen if you went back to meet yourself?”

This last question is the most relevant of the three, because it spawns the real question at the root of time travel fiction: What would you do over?

Well? Ask yourself that question: If you could go back to any moment in your own lifetime, have one day to live over, have one decision to take back, have one more time to say goodbye to a lost loved one, have a chance to be the hero or get the win or get the girl or . . . anything, what would you do?
Time travel stories, or, at least, many of them, are cautionary tales against regret: If you change that moment, what else would that moment change to your life now?  If you relive a moment, would it live up to how you remember it?

In “Primer”, it is these last questions which get asked, but asked in smaller terms: “If you could go back from tonight to this morning, if you could go back a day, two days, a week, and do anything, what would you do?”

The most original thing about “Primer” is how it limits that question, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

“Primer” focuses on the story of two engineers who, while working on an a new invention, accidentally discover that they’ve invented a machine that holds whatever has been placed in it in a time loop.  This time loop will run from the time which a setting on the machine is turned on to when it’s turned off, and then it will loop back to when it was turned on.  The important part is that they can enter and exit at either end of the loop, so, if you turn the setting on at say 8am, and turn it off at 6pm, then get into the machine at that time, and stay in for 10 hours, when you get out it will be 8am again. So, those are the rules: Turn the machine on, wait, turn it off, get in, wait, and, when you get out, you will be back at the time when the machine was turned on.

The rest of the movie focuses on these inventors figuring out what the other rules of the machine are, what they can do within those rules, and what they become when they realize that those actions have no consequences.

My only problem with “Primer” is that, in trying to explain the rules and what they are doing, the dialog is overloaded with technical jargon and abstract-speak, making the conversations more difficult to follow than they needed to be.  This is also reflected in how the film is paced; in how the different twists and turns in the movie are revealed; that they are deliberately more confusing and convoluted than they need to be.  I felt as though the story could have been told more clearly and still been just as dramatic and original.

Overall, the film was clever enough to be interesting, and the twists and turns made for an original story.  But, the way in which they made much of the reveals of those twists and turns more confusing and more difficult to understand felt unnecessary, as though it would do more to alienate the audience than draw them in.

In theatre, they say that the only thing the audience won’t forgive is not being able to see or hear you.

They also won’t forgive you if they can’t understand you.

(Also, the trailer doesn't help you any).