Nima Yousefi's Equinox of Insanity

Primer

I watched the indie sci-fi drama Primer over the weekend and I think I enjoyed it. I say “think” because I still haven’t completely wrapped my noodle around the film, which is, it seems, entirely by design.

The film tells the story of two Silicon Valley engineers looking for some VC money, and to get it they decide to build a device that does something special. The device they end up building does actually do something very special — it bends the flow of time such that an object inside the box moves through time 1347 times faster than everything outside the box. Naturally these guys realize that if the device can bend time within it to move faster, then naturally it can also be configured such that time moves backwards.

Or something like that. I honestly don’t really understand what the hell was actually going on, and that is what I find so interesting about this film (from a writing standpoint). The writer, Shane Carruth (who also directed it and stars in it), makes absolutely no effort to fill the audience in on what’s going on in the film. The film only says what the characters in the film need to know, and nothing more. The audience is completely ignored by the filmmakers. Even the dialogue is structured this way, with lines like “We should do what we talked about,” being common place. What is it they were talking about? Who knows. Well, they know, and that’s the point. The net effect is that the viewer is turned into an eavesdropper, which is makes the experience of viewing surreal and, in my humble opinion, more interesting.

Ultimately the film deals with three fundamental questions: What would you do if you had the power to go back in time? What would be the consequences? And can you handle it? As the film shows, the paradoxes that are created from time travel can be a head trip. They can also be quite dangerous. The best line in the film is undoubtedly one of the characters saying, “Man are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.” It’s sort of like the The Next Generation finale “All Good Things…,” except minus Patrick Stewart and much more confusing. Also, no inexplicable warp 13.

Sit for the credits. They’re done in a old magazine kind of style that I don’t think I’ve seen used in credits before. I think Khoi Vinh would definitely approve.

I feel compelled to warn you that this film is only for people who can deal with confusion, and who haven’t been smoking weed consistently for the last ten years (you know who you are). It’s a bizarre experience, because of the eavesdropping quality the film has, but it’s one that I think is worthwhile. It’s also neat to see a film that mercilessly throws around science and technology and argon gas with no concern for whether or not the viewer knows what the hell any of it means. I can dig that, but I fully respect that not everyone else will. On a side note, I’ve noticed Japanese anime movies — such as the spectacular Escaflowne — tend to not bother filling in details for the audience as well. If you can figure out what the guy is riding around on a horse and why the guy he’s fighting is able to turn into a flying giraffe and why there are robots running around but everyone’s using swords instead of guns or lasers then I think Primer is going to be your kind of film.