Primer (2004), a low-budget indie film written and directed by Shane Carruth about time travel, is legendary for being impossible to understand on your first watch (or your second, or third...). Often times, deliberately obfuscated films can be obnoxious in their mission to confuse the viewer in order to appear clever, but in this case that obfuscation is not only completely earned, it's the entire point.
Most stories that make good use of time travel use a time loop as a plot device. I use the term "time loop" to refer to when time travel causes a closed loop of causality. Everything time travellers do when they go back in time, even if they are actively trying to change the past, simply ends up causing the situation in the future that causes the time traveller to go back in the first place. History cannot be changed; nothing could have turned out differently. Time loops work because they strengthen the sense of inevitability of the ending (which is essential to a satisfying ending). Their usage implies that the universe in which they exist is deterministic. Some films try to ignore the philosophical considerations inherent in the existence of time loops; others embrace it, and are all the stronger.
But Primer does not have time loops, because that's not how time travel works in the story. Instead, it has what I like to call time spirals.
At the beginning of the film we are introduced to four engineering types who make low-end electronic products in their garages for extra money. One innovation in the film is their dialogue: they speak exactly like such people might speak, with no dumbing down of language. A layman listening to them speak (such as myself) only ever half-understands them. This plays a large part in the deliberately murky nature of the film.
Two of these techies, Abe and Aaron, are the protagonists. They discover that they've accidentally created a time machine. The explanation for how the machine works is rather complicated, but I will try to put it as succinctly as possible. The machine is a box. If it's turned on at point A, and turned off at point B, an object that is put inside it at point B can be removed at point A. Thus, the object travels backwards in time. Once Abe and Aaron realize how the machine works, it doesn't take them long to send themselves back in time. This causes a situation where, for a time, there are two Abes or two Aarons walking around. At first, because the two aren't sure what will happen if they create a paradox, they isolate themselves the first time they live through a day, while they wait for the time to shut off the machine (remember, they can only travel back in time once they turn off the machine, at point-in-time B). So there are only two versions of the time traveller during that period of time. They also want to be sure that the simultaneous existence of multiple versions of themselves is temporary.
But they soon accidentally create a paradox and break the causality during the period of time when there are two Abes and two Aarons – and nothing happens. There are no consequences. History can be changed; time loops aren't necessary or inevitable.
This is where the plot thread crosses the line from "difficult to follow" to "impossible to follow on a first viewing" – because both Abe and Aaron begin not only changing causality and causing there to be multiple versions of themselves. And this is why I call this chain of causality a "time spiral" – because characters loop backwards but don't close them. Things never happen exactly like they did the first time. They just keep changing each time through.
And once you have events you've already seen happening differently multiple times, and multiple versions of each character running around, and minimal to no exposition about what's just happened, confusion is inevitable. But that confusion reflects the situation Aaron and Abe are in. The narrative form is perfectly fitted to the other elements of the film (its story, its characters' state of mind, its theme, etc).
This is one of the rare films I've seen where I've enjoyed it even as I lost the plot thread, possibly even because I did. It simply demands multiple viewings to fully understand. And if the film gets better with each viewing, is that necessity such a bad thing?
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