I haven't eaten since later this afternoon...
I watched the movie Primer last night. It is not about cars. It's a sci-fi movie, shot on a shoestring budget, that won the Grand Prize for Drama at the Sundance film festival last year. The sci part of the fi concerns fringe physics -- gravity manipulation, time travel, and free energy all wrapped up in one. So of course you know I was interested. The writer/director/star/composer used to be an engineer, so it's packed with jargony goodness, white short-sleeved shirts, and cheap ties. Of course, we're talking pseudo-science here, but anything involving time travel almost has to be by definition.
Anyway, the movie devolves into incomprehensibility in the last half hour. The whole thing is only 77 minutes. I don't know if you're not supposed to understand the plot or if they just ran out of film stock for exposition. I want to believe that it intentionally becomes incomprehensible, because it would be so much better that way. Whatever your understanding of physics and time-travel paradoxes, I'm sure that for anyone watching, there comes a point where you just hit a wall & can't remotely fathom what's going on. I am also confident that that wall is built on the question "who the fuck is Rachel's boyfriend?" but contains large chunks of "wait a minute, how many Aarons are running around now?" and "So there are how many time machines running at the same time?" and "I'm sorry, define 'failsafe' in this situation, because it just seems to be making things less safe in geometrical proportion." It's a place the characters are in too, which you would think would make them STOP fucking around with the timeline at some point, but that's one of the reasons why the movie comes to be vaguely terrifying and catastrophic. If that's what the director was going for -- and I have to think it is -- then it worked on me. Boy howdy. On the other hand, if you're looking for a sensible plot with tidy resolution, the movie just sucks ass with braces. It's a mess by the end!
So I suppose what I'm saying is that the movie will either strike you as brilliant or offensively pretentious and confusing. Probably a bit of both. Which is my book is a worthwile movie viewing experience.
Anyway, the movie devolves into incomprehensibility in the last half hour. The whole thing is only 77 minutes. I don't know if you're not supposed to understand the plot or if they just ran out of film stock for exposition. I want to believe that it intentionally becomes incomprehensible, because it would be so much better that way. Whatever your understanding of physics and time-travel paradoxes, I'm sure that for anyone watching, there comes a point where you just hit a wall & can't remotely fathom what's going on. I am also confident that that wall is built on the question "who the fuck is Rachel's boyfriend?" but contains large chunks of "wait a minute, how many Aarons are running around now?" and "So there are how many time machines running at the same time?" and "I'm sorry, define 'failsafe' in this situation, because it just seems to be making things less safe in geometrical proportion." It's a place the characters are in too, which you would think would make them STOP fucking around with the timeline at some point, but that's one of the reasons why the movie comes to be vaguely terrifying and catastrophic. If that's what the director was going for -- and I have to think it is -- then it worked on me. Boy howdy. On the other hand, if you're looking for a sensible plot with tidy resolution, the movie just sucks ass with braces. It's a mess by the end!
So I suppose what I'm saying is that the movie will either strike you as brilliant or offensively pretentious and confusing. Probably a bit of both. Which is my book is a worthwile movie viewing experience.