Primer is a twisted, massively confusing new thriller about time travel. Since hardcore science drives the philosophic puzzle at Primer’s core, I decided to take one of my friends, an engineering student at none other than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to help me figure it out.
The first film by writer/director/star Shane Carruth, Primer began to attract attention when it won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The movie is a low budget experiment in hyper-realistic science fiction, which means that it’s only slightly beyond the realm of the believable.
One part Pi and another part Office Space, Primer is an excellent genre bender. The plot is convoluted and irrelevant, but the film follows two engineers named Abe and Aaron who run a small tech start up. As part of an experiment to improve one of their products, Abe starts to notice some twisted side effects. Abe and Aaron eventually discover they have a kind of short-term time machine. They build larger, human-sized versions of the device in which they can sit for a few hours and then exit at the point in time when the machine was turned on (or something like that). Somehow this creates a cloning effect, where multiple selves can run around playing the stock market and reversing events.
By the time Abe and Aaron got the machines going, I had no idea what was happening. I was so engrossed in figuring out the science of it all that the plot action and sequence of events became hopelessly jumbled. But this isn’t necessarily a problem. Primer’s science distracts you long enough to slip in increasingly complex scenarios and uses of the time machine. This is a creative manipulation of the sci-fi genre: rather than construct a parable through supernatural phenomenon, Primer offers no coherent message outside of its fractal chronology of endless possible meanings.
Primer doesn’t stop at showing the time, effort and monotony that goes into engineering. It also shows the more difficult task of figuring out what to do at each step of the invention process. Do Abe and Aaron publish their findings? Do they try and build a time machine? But how do you go about using a constrained, short term device? The film is a primer for all sorts of philosophic questions. Science shifts paradigms largely by experimental accident, and the uses of new discoveries are almost never apparent. Primer’s questions arise out of all possible scientific discoveries, decisions and literal reversal of decisions made by Abe and Aaron.
Was my MIT friend better equipped to understand Primer’s crazy pseudo-science? Due to our own varying aptitudes and insecurities, he brushed off the scientific questions of the time machine in favor of the narrative and I got caught up in the science at the expense of plot. As the science-fiction/philosophy puzzle became increasingly entangled in the narrative (and vice-versa), we were equally confused. In the end neither of our approaches provided any coherent interpretation. We both left the theater bewildered, but with an appreciation for the complexity of the film. As a documentary of the scientific process, a disturbing sci-fi thriller and an inadvertent protest against coherent narrative, Primer engages the audience on all sorts of awesome, nerdy levels.
