Primer

So... this movie was tough to follow.

I'm going with another kind of obscure independent film and this one is a little odd. Maybe not as odd as people in a different reality making sure you have good dreams and fighting the people who give you bad dreams but still its odd.

Primer is the story of two men who accidentally discover time travel. Aaron and Abe work in a 4 man team who work for a large corporation but on their own time do their own research looking for a next big breakthrough to bring them to the top.

When they discover time travel, they are able to begin doing experiments and eventually make money on the stock market.

Eventually things go a little haywire and Abe begins having second thoughts about time travel while Aaron starts manipulating this technology even more.

Eventually Abe starts trying to prevent these trips they're making while Aaron tries to expand his knowledge and use of the time machine.

This movie is fascinating because almost the entire movie is just these two characters talking. And not only are they talking, they're mainly talking in scientific terms that "explain" how they discovered time travel.

I'm not going to lie, I had a really hard time following this movie. After the first half hour I realized they're going to be talking like this for the entire movie. And they do. They just talk and talk and talk. Without any music in the background or dramatic flair to it, it takes a very patient person to watch this movie.

Now of course this was the directors intent, he wanted to put emphasis on the fact that while time travel is very science fiction, the means by which they came across it were very grounded and "realistic".

Another part of this movie that I suppose is meant to be clever but kind of comes off as convoluted to me is the process of time travel and how they interact with their doubles.

There are a lot of graphs and charts trying to explain the process in Primer and this one to the left is the simplest. But while this may seem simple, its not. This doesn't put into account the number of doubles they encounter and it just gets very confusing that you need to pay very close attention when they're explaining it.

I probably will re-watch this movie to try and understand the complexity of it but there's complex and then there's Primer complex. There's The Prestige complex that is incredibly entertaining and after a watch or two makes perfect sense. There's Memento which makes total sense after an hour or so.

And then there's Primer. I think it'll take a few watches for me to totally understand this movie and while that may have been their purpose, to have people want to re-watch their movie over and over until they get it, since the acting in it is really bland and boring, there's not really a draw for me to re-watch this movie.

So that's Primer. Its an interesting look into time travel and I always enjoy different interpretations, but it is overly complex and not appealing enough to make me want to watch it again to understand. There are movies that you have to think when you watch them, and then there is Primer. If you're up for that challenge, well then by all means watch this movie, if you're not, you're not really missing much.

Have you seen Primer? What did you think about it? Comment below and let me know.

I'll leave you with this. Maybe I'm just not a complex mind as some people but I love my simple time travel story in Back to the Future. So here's a messed up version of that.