SYNOPSICS
Primer (2004) is a English,French movie. Shane Carruth has directed this movie. Shane Carruth,David Sullivan,Casey Gooden,Anand Upadhyaya are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2004. Primer (2004) is considered one of the best Drama,Sci-Fi,Thriller movie in India and around the world.
Engineers Aaron, Abe, Robert and Phillip are working on an invention, the prototype being built in Aaron's garage. This project is beyond their day jobs. The project truly does belong to Aaron and Abe, as they use all their free time working on it, primarily trying to overcome the many engineering related problems they've encountered. It is during one of his tests with the invention running that Abe discovers that a protein inside the main unit has multiplied much more rapidly than it could in nature. Rather than the invention being a protein super incubator, Abe, using himself as a guinea pig, and a very meticulous one at that, discovers that the invention can be used as a time machine. In his self experiment, Abe was especially careful not to interfere with his own self in that time warp. Abe passes along this discovery to Aaron, who he expects will tell his wife Kara in what is the sanctity of their marriage, but he doesn't want to tell either Robert or Phillip. Much to Abe's ...
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Primer (2004) Reviews
No Maps for These Territories
It's not easy to follow. The production values aren't perfect. There's not an obvious 'good guy' or 'bad guy.' But was this movie any good? Oh hell yes. This movie has been compared to "2001" because of the sci-fi angle. But while the movie has one sci-fi element in it (the device), the movie isn't even about that. It's about these two guys, and how it affects them individually, and their relationship with one another. I found this movie to be fairly challenging, but worth the ride. I was up for hours discussing this movie with friends, and if that's not what you like to do with your movies, then this one probably isn't for you. But if you like something that tweaks your brain, that you can watch repeated times, that you can really chew on... then here comes "Primer," like a ghost in the night. It's too early to tell where this movie will reside in cinematic history-- revered, forgotten, or somewhere in between-- but it's already won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (where it beat out 'Garden State'), and just won't go away. It moves along, it's clever, it held my attention. Even "Pi" didn't do that, and if you're a film nerd, that's saying something. If you're not a film nerd, approach this one with more caution. Remember, Shane Carruth had no idea even how to make a movie when he started making this one, but the end result is something far more fascinating than your typical film-school snob could ever put together. This is wholly original, and took me someplace I have never been. And that alone makes the "2001" comparison start to look more and more accurate.....
Confusing but it makes perfect sense
Partial explanation Only for those who have seen the movie. The movie is shown completely linearly from Abe's perspective. (Abe's the blond one.) I'm sure most people can follow the move up until the scene in the garage where Philip and Robert explain to Abe that Rachell's ex boy friend showed up at the Robert's party with a shot gun. Things get strange at this point because Aaron and Abe are now planning to stop the ex boy friend, an event that from regular time has already happened but we are viewing the movie from Abe's perspective and he hasn't gone to the party yet. Also at the time of the garage scene Abe doesn't yet know that Aaron used the failsafe machine to change the events at the party. When Abe shows up at the fail safe machine it isn't the one he left running but the one that Arron had taken back in time inside the first fail safe machine. When Abe goes back in time he meets Arron who already knows what Abe was going to say because he's also gone back in time. Abe knocks his past self out with the NO2 while Arron drugs his own breakfast milk. At this point they are changing their own past. They don't play the stock market so they aren't rich at the end of the movie. Aaron's been recording all the conversations that he hears through the ear piece so he's ready the second time that Abe comes to explain that they have built a time machine, only the second time Abe has also come back in time. We will never know what would have happened at the party if Aaron and Abe hadn't used the time machine to change the events at the party because those events never happen. We do know that Abe tells Rachel's father the venture capitalist about the time machine and he uses it. That's why he has a couple days worth of beard growth. Aaron goes though the days several times and even meets himself and gets in a fight with himself. Now all you have to do is watch it another 3 times to confirm what I just wrote.
Beautifully Flawed
Here's the gist of it: as another review has said, 'the script is riddled with problems, about 60% of the movie is out of focus, the audio is muffled and garbled, and continuity problems abound'. All these things are true. Yet despite all appearances, this does not amount to a bad movie. It just makes Primer a exquisitely different movie, and furthermore, a movie that works. The reason to love it is that it's utterly defiant of the expectations of the traditional movie experience. It can't resort to a beautiful cast, shiny special effects, gorgeous scenery. Indeed, the cast is wooden in its acting, which turns out to work because that's how normal scientists and engineers (and people in general) are, flawed communicators. The settings are drab, out of focus, rushed and cheap, which turns out to work because that's what being efficient with your resources means for an inventor. It doesn't matter if the makers of Primer were forced into this style by their budget (as opposed to consciously 'pulling off' this look and feel). All that matters is that in the end, it turns out to work beautifully with the plot and the story. What this means is that it has nothing to go on except its wits. And wits it does have. This is not to say that it's coherent you will be confused by the fact that the plot doesn't nicely clean up after itself. There is no nice take-home message, no all-knowing schemework. But it is an intellectually respectable, honest attempt at dealing with the paradoxes of time travel. I've never seen any major flick that throws up its hands in the complexity of it all and just admits there's only so far you can look into things most movies you'll see gloss over the issues with some bad science, or worse, simply don't ask the questions. It's entertainment that's intellectually honest and respectable, and that's a tremendously rare thing. 9/10
Incredible
You remember the first time you saw The Matrix (please, not the awful sequels) and you could barely keep up with what was going on, trying to piece together the pieces of what you were being told into a coherent story? This movie was exactly like that. The first half or so is fairly linear (despite the frenzied Altman-esque style of everyone talking on top of each other), but then it gets WEIRD and it just absolutely blew me away. This film won a major Sundance award, and normally that means I won't like it (especially the normally pandering audience award winners) but this movie, and first-time filmmaker Shane Carruth, deserves absolutely everything it gets. I am just blown away. Did you like Pi? If so, go see this one. By the way, the attention to detail in the beginning is great. Often in thrillers with technical content, if you have a technical education you have consciously ignore all the stupid movie crud that they pull to make it into a good story. But this movie pulls off an incredibly believable technical story, with only a few distracting gaffs. That is, the tech jargon is good enough that you don't get distracted and can focus on the story line. Final comment: Yes, it is very hard to follow the story line in this movie. Obviously I'm not going to spoil it, but I think the following fact will help when the movie gets kind of hairy towards the end: Aaron is the dark-haired guy, Abe is the blond-haired guy. This movie now has distribution and you should keep an eye out for it in the fall.
A film for the days when science fiction was about wrestling with ideas . . .
A group of young scientists work at a frantic pace to invent they are not quite sure what, but their efforts start demonstrating interesting side effects. From their work in a small cottage industry of error checking devices they are forced to confront the fact that they have discovered something too valuable to market. As they explore the potential of their machine, they are caught in a frantic loop to second guess themselves. Science fiction in the cinema has largely been dominated by the visual impact, and so this is a welcome (for some) return to the world of ideas. This is not an easy-rise entertainment film but one where you have to concentrate to keep up, working out the logical implications of what's happening. If made on the scale of Men in Black or the Matrix it would descend to the level of spoof as it is we follow the two main characters knowing that their actions are having momentous effects on the world around them and on themselves. Instead of flashy graphics, we are left to keep the ramifications of the story in mind as the characters themselves grapple with what they know is happening but can't even let themselves look at directly.