Primer (film)

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Not to be confused with Prime (film).
Primer
Directed by Shane Carruth
Produced by Shane Carruth
Written by Shane Carruth
Starring Shane Carruth
David Sullivan
Music by Shane Carruth
Cinematography Shane Carruth
Editing by Shane Carruth
Distributed by ThinkFilm
Release date(s) October 8, 2004
Running time 77 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $7,000
Gross revenue $424,760

Primer (2004) is an American science fiction film about the accidental invention of time travel. The film was written, directed and produced by Shane Carruth, a former mathematician and engineer, and was completed on a budget of only $7,000.[1]

The principal characters in the film are Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), two engineers who create a device which will allow an object or person to travel backwards in time. The pair initially use the device to cheat on the stock market, but are ultimately unable to resist the temptation to meddle with every aspect of their lives. Through recklessness they create increasingly complex paradoxes, and ultimately their newfound power begins to destroy their friendship.

Primer is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth chose not to dumb down for the sake of his audience. One reviewer said that "anybody who claims [to] fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar."[2] The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 before securing a limited release in cinemas, and has since gained a cult following.[3]

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

The operation of time travel in Primer

The film takes place in the industrial park and suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed U.S. city. Four engineers—Aaron , Abe, Robert, and Phillip—work for a large corporation during the day, and run a side business out of Aaron's garage at night, building and selling error-checking devices for computer motherboards. With the proceeds of this work, they fund pet science projects.

After an argument over which project the group should tackle next, Aaron and Abe independently take to designing a compact high-temperature superconductor, a device which will reduce the weight of any object. Although the device works as intended, it has an unexpected side effect: Abe and Aaron confirm that they have accidentally created a time machine after they test the device on their watches. They immediately cut Robert and Phillip out of the group on the pretense that the garage has to be fumigated.

Abe and Aaron build two more machines large enough to hold a person. Their utility is limited compared to traditional depictions of time travel: the machines can only transport the user backwards in time, and have unexpected side-effects on the user. Once the machine is activated, the user waits for the amount of time they wish to travel backwards. They then enter the machine, wait for the same period of time, and exit at the point the machine was originally activated. For example, if the machine is turned on at noon, and the user waits six hours until 6 p.m., then enters the machine and waits a further six hours, they will exit at the original activation point of noon. Staying in the machine would cause the user to continuously cycle back and forth between 6 p.m. and noon, with the ability to exit the machine at either endpoint. Getting out of the machine before reaching an endpoint causes a severe physical reaction—so Abe and Aaron never leave the machine early.

At first, Abe and Aaron use the time machine to succeed in the stock market, but they cannot resist the temptation to alter their personal lives and how they are perceived by the people around them. Aaron in particular becomes obsessed with becoming a "hero" by stopping a shotgun-wielding maniac at a party. He makes repeated trips back in time until he learns the exact sequence of events that must happen in order to stop the man.

Abe becomes averse to Aaron's excessive tampering with the past, and is further concerned by the unexpected appearance of Thomas Granger (Chip Carruth), the group's original sponsor, who has apparently used one of their machines to travel back in time for unknown reasons (the film's voiceover remarks that the reason is "unknowable"). Abe subsequently attempts to prevent his past self from discovering time travel—thereby nullifying all of its consequences—by utilising a machine he secretly built, which allows him to travel back to a point prior to his broaching the subject of time travel with Aaron. However, Aaron discovers this "failsafe" machine independently and uses it to pre-empt Abe's plan, allowing him to retain "control" over the timeline.

The two men become entangled in increasingly complex paradoxes, losing trust in one another as they try to use the machine for personal gain. Ultimately these deceptions destroy their friendship and Aaron leaves the country. The last scene in the film shows him instructing a team of workers to line the walls of a warehouse with metal plates, as he begins construction on a building-sized machine.

[edit] Themes

Carruth's goal was to portray scientific discovery in a down-to-earth and realistic manner. He argued that many breakthrough scientific discoveries occur by accident, in locations no more glamorous than Aaron's garage.[1]

"Whether it involved the history of the number zero or the invention of the transistor, two things stood out to me. First is that the discovery that turns out to be the most valuable is usually dismissed as a side-effect. Second is that prototypes almost never include neon lights and chrome. I wanted to see a story play out that was more in line with the way real innovation takes place than I had seen on film before."[1]

Carruth has said that he intended the central theme of the film to be the breakdown of Abe and Aaron's relationship,[4] and their inability to morally cope with newfound power:

"First thing, I saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but ethically, morons. They never had any reasons before to have ethical questions. So when they're hit with this device they're blindsided by it. The first thing they do is make money with it. They're not talking about the ethics of altering your former self."[5]

[edit] Production

While writing the script, Carruth studied physics in order to make Abe and Aaron's technical dialogue sound authentic. He took the unusual step of eschewing any contrived exposition and retaining the shorthand phrases and jargon used by working scientists. This realist philosophy was carried over into production design. The time machine itself is a plain gray box, with a distinctive electronic "hum" created by overlaying the sounds of a mechanical grinder and a car engine, rather than a processed digital effect. Carruth also set the story in unglamorous industrial parks and suburban tract homes.[1]

Carruth chose to deliberately obfuscate the film's plot in order to mirror the complexity and confusion created by time travel. As he said in a 2004 interview: "This machine and Abe and Aaron’s experience are inherently complicated so it needed to be that way in order for the audience to be where Abe and Aaron are, which was always my hope."[4]

Primer was filmed over five weeks on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas.[1] It was produced with a budget of only USD $7,000,[5] and a skeleton crew of five. Shane Carruth acted as writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and music composer.[6] He also stars in the film as Aaron, and many of the other characters are played by his friends and family. The small budget required conservative use of the Super 16mm filmstock.[1] The extremely low shooting ratio of 2:1 meant that the number of takes had to be strictly limited, and with no room for mistakes, every shot in the film was meticulously storyboarded on 35mm stills.[4] Carruth created a distinctive flat, overexposed look for the film through use of fluorescent lighting, non-neutral color temperatures, high-speed film stock, and filters.[1]

After principal photography, Carruth took two years to fully post-produce Primer. He has since said that this experience was so arduous that he almost abandoned the film on several occasions.[4]

[edit] Physics and science

  In this Feynman diagram, an electron and positron annihilate producing a virtual photon that becomes a quark-antiquark pair. Then one radiates a gluon.
  • Aaron and Abe start the film by attempting to create a high-temperature superconductor. This machine operates on the principles of the Meissner Effect. The characters allude to this as they are designing the machine. In the dialog of the film, they refer to changing "transition temperature" as well as "knock[ing] out the interior magnetic field."
  • Aaron and Abe require palladium to build their machine. This is the reason they take the catalytic converter from a car; catalytic converters contain small amounts of palladium.
  • The principles of time travel in the film are based on Feynman diagrams.[7] Physicists use Feynman diagrams to model the interaction between elementary particles. In some cases this can be an electron and a positron that have been created from the transformation of energy in a photon — this is known as pair production. The positron would be indistinguishable from an electron traveling backward in time. Thus, Feynman diagrams depict these interactions as being the same when happening forward or backward in time.[7]
  • In the dialog of the film, Aaron and Abe mention that "there's some sort of probability" when describing what happens in the machine. This is a reference to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Pair productions occur within the confines of this principle.

[edit] Cast

Abe and Aaron test their experimental superconductor.

Shane Carruth cast himself as Aaron after having trouble finding actors who could "break ... the habit of filling each line with so much drama"[1]. Most of the other actors are either friends or family members.

[edit] Distribution

Carruth secured a North American distribution deal with THINKFilm after the company's head of theatrical distribution, Mark Urman, saw the film at the 2004 Sundance Festival.[8] Although he and Carruth made a "handshake agreement" during the festival, Urman reported that the actual negotiation of the deal was the longest he had ever been involved with, in part due to Carruth's specific demands over how much control over the film he would retain.[8] The film went on to take $424,760 at the box office.[9]

[edit] Reception

Primer received broadly positive reviews in the mainstream press. The website Metacritic, which scores films based on an aggregate of reviews, rated Primer at 68%,[10] while the similar site Rotten Tomatoes rates it at 72%[11] and lists it as one of the best science fiction movies "for the thinking man"[12].

Many reviewers were impressed by the film's originality. Dennis Lim of The Village Voice said that it was "the freshest thing the genre has seen since 2001,"[13] while in The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that Carruth had "the skill, the guile and the seriousness to turn a creaky philosophical gimmick into a dense and troubling moral puzzle."[14] Scott also enjoyed the film's realistic depiction of scientists at work, saying that Carruth had an "impressive feel for the odd, quiet rhythms of small-scale research and development."[14]

There was also praise for Carruth's ability to maintain high production values on a minuscule budget, with Roger Ebert declaring: "The movie never looks cheap, because every shot looks as it must look."[15] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe commented that "aspects of Primer are so low-rent as to evoke guffaws", but added that "the homemade feel is part of the point."[16]

The film's unusually complex plot and dense dialogue proved controversial. Scott Tobias writes for The Onion A.V. Club: "The banter is heavy on technical jargon and almost perversely short on exposition; were it not for the presence of voiceover narration, the film would be close to incomprehensible."[3] While for the Los Angeles Times, Carina Chocano writes: "sticklers for linear storytelling are bound to be frustrated by narrative threads that start promisingly, then just sort of fall off the spool."[17] Some reviewers were entirely put off by the film's obfuscated narrative. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter complained that Primer "nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture."[10]

[edit] Awards

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Primer Official Site: Story/Production". http://www.primermovie.com/story.html#qa. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. 
  2. ^ D'Angelo, Mike (2004-11-01). "The Best Movie We've Seen Since Tomorrow". Esquire. Hearst Communications, Inc. http://www.esquire.com/features/movies/ESQ1104-NOV_MOVIES. Retrieved on 2008-05-19. 
  3. ^ a b Tobias, Scott (2008-04-01). "The New Cult Canon: Primer". The Onion A.V. Club. Onion Inc. http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/the_new_cult_canon_primer. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  4. ^ a b c d Murray, Rebecca (2004-10-22). "Interview with Shane Carruth". About.com. The New York Times Company. http://movies.about.com/od/primer/a/primer102104_2.htm. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  5. ^ a b Mitchell, Wendy. "Shane Carruth on "Primer"; The Lessons of a First-Timer". indieWIRE.com. http://www.indiewire.com/article/dvd_re-run_interview_shane_carruth_on_primer_the_lessons_of_a_first-timer/. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  6. ^ Primer at the Internet Movie Database
  7. ^ a b "A Primer Primer". The Village Voice. http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-10-05/film/a-primer-primer. Retrieved on 2009-01-24. 
  8. ^ a b Taubin, Amy. "Primer: The New Whiz Kid on the Block". Film Comment. http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/artandindustry/primer.htm. Retrieved on 2008-05-20. 
  9. ^ "Film Profiles: Primer". Variety. Reed Elsevier Inc. http://www.variety.com/profiles/Film/main/152428/Primer.html?dataSet=1. Retrieved on 2008-05-20. 
  10. ^ a b "Metacritic". http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/primer?q=Primer. Retrieved on 2008-05-15. 
  11. ^ "Rotten Tomatoes". http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/primer/. Retrieved on 2008-09-28. 
  12. ^ Jeff Giles. "Ten Sci-Fi Flicks for the Thinking Man". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/children_of_men/news/1789873/3/ten_sci_fi_flicks_for_the_thinking_man. Retrieved on 2009-01-15. 
  13. ^ Lim, Dennis (2004-09-28). "36-Hour Party People". The Village Voice. Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC. http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0440,lim,57301,20.html. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  14. ^ a b Scott, A. O. (2004-10-08). "From a Suburban Garage, a New Take on Time Travel". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/movies/08PRIM.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  15. ^ Ebert, Roger (2004-10-29). "Reviews: Primer". Rogerebert.com. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041028/REVIEWS/40920013/1001. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  16. ^ Burr, Ty (2004-10-15). "'Primer' is an entertaining overload of techno possibilities". The Boston Globe. NY Times Co. http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=7295. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  17. ^ Chocano, Carina (2004-10-22). "Reviews: Primer". The Los Angeles Times. http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-primer22nuoct22,2,765989.story. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  18. ^ a b "Sundance Film Festival: Films Honoured 1985-2007" (pdf). Sundance Institute. http://sundance.org/festival/press_industry/pdf/Sundance%20Film%20Festival%20Awards%201985-2007.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 
  19. ^ "Awards and Nominations; Critical Acclaim". Primer web site. http://www.primermovie.com/acclaim.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-05. 
  20. ^ "Awards History". The London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. http://www.sci-fi-london.com/archive/history.php. Retrieved on 2008-05-16. 

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Primer (film)
Awards
Preceded by
American Splendor		 Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic
2004		 Succeeded by
Forty Shades of Blue
Preceded by
Dopamine		 Alfred P. Sloan Prize Winner
2004		 Succeeded by
Grizzly Man
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