"Primer" (2004) - Movie Review

“Primer” is a paradox of itself that every time you think to figure out on how the heck the logic works, you are stuck and befuddled. But something interesting is happening and something definitely unique. I for one could never figure out the entire happenings in it but it is a curious experience. May be it is the appreciation for a person laborious in his presentation and his arduous work visible over the film. He is Shane Caruth who with a budget of 7000$ took the role of actor, writer, director, producer and composing music, gives a film very highly technical in script and vision.

A group of garage geeks Abe (David Sullivan), Aaron (Shane Caruth), Robert (Casey Gooden) and Philip (Anand Upadhyaya) are doing a part time passionate science project. Abe and Aaron clearly seem to do something greater and hence cut out the two others. When you get into lunch with a group of Engineers it might get awkwardly boring. Because without their knowledge they tend to be in the mode of self centered science obsession which results in the negation of a friendly social communication. Hence the separated geek cult with a social loser tab on their head exists in their parallel universe. Mostly in films they are depicted as intelligent no gainers. In “Primer” they are the film. There is no effort to tone the techie terms down by Shane Caruth which might annoy some one but that is the fun. They describe an unknown device they are building for which we are curious to see it finally while the characters are obsessively curious and tense on what does it going to do. They indeed see what it can do which is where the mother of paradoxes and confusion starts to happen both in the film and for the viewers.

What is unique about the “Primer” is their dauntless display of dialogues and surprisingly sharp performance from new, young and may be a lot inexperienced actors. Every one makes a debut and Sullivan and Caruth is a pair of chemistry personalities where we believe their brainiac adherence to each other. Each not only knows each other’s technical move but they compliment each other on that which is where their friendship gets content and fulfilled. That completes them because their technical universe is their personal universe and everything intertwined around it. Wife, girl friend, friends, work and everything.

And the discovery of their accident is the riddle which keeps on building for us to be solved. What are they talking? What have they discovered? Is it going to be a moral dilemma to succumb to the moguls of machine world? Anxiety keeps the film running on high wire and never stops. Perplexity grows proportionally along with it but it never ceases the screenplay at all. It is pure work of honesty in details and done if I may say brutally ruthless to their imagination. It does not condescend because it is their realm. Being a mathematician and engineer himself, Caruth just plays his field perfect.

So what are all this bewildered expressions I am talking about? What are these paradoxes? Well, when Abe and Aaron begin to venture their time over a possibility in finding a solution of super conductivity, a phenomenon happens which makes time travel possible. Now do not jump into the conclusion that we have seen it done badly in lot of films from the time of silent films. It is not the blockbuster summer action but a genuine intelligent concept. It comes with strings attached for the travel and being who they are. Being the engineers they are, they go back and begin to alter their past to perfection and that result in their disintegration of personal life and also the friendship between them.

I was wondering what it all meant. Where are these doubles they talk about and what in the end they do in correcting those? How do they correct it? It never made sense at all but there is a proof somewhere in it. It is how some one comes up with algorithm logic design for software to tell for an example with which I can feebly associate. Some where in the process of finding the solution, one would have thought through and worked over it in their head and when it comes down to writing down over the paper or implementing it, some thing is wrong. It would be a simple correction and getting to it is agonizing. Sometimes it never does arrive and the design goes back to start from scratch again. “Primer” will be like that and may be it can be solved but it would take a long time in reiterations. The thing is, it is fun doing it and that makes “Primer” a very tightly made intelligent film.