Here’s an unpopular opinion: movies should speak for themselves. In the ever-incessant era of YouTube, TikTok, and social media, there is certainly no dearth of “explanation” videos, wherein overexcited users breathlessly spin their takes on a film they’ve just seen and slam the publish button to cement their content as some kind of cinematic law. (For a fun, slightly masochistic exercise, go to your search engine right now and type in “[any David Lynch movie] explained,” and then scroll through the endless results until your eyes glaze over, cross, force themselves closed). Even if/when these responses do articulate credible and impassioned interpretation, that’s ultimately all it is: an interpretation. Usually, with regard to the content these videos peddle, there is simply no objective truth to be found. Wouldn’t it be exponentially more thrilling to give yourself over to the film, to experience the vastness of cinema rather than only the limitations of narrative, even if you don’t quite “get it” on a first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth viewing? Should a film offer no secrets? There are many factors to enjoying and experiencing a film, but must comprehension be one of them by requisite? Cinema is a visual medium after all, so why shouldn’t some films be truly inexplicable, or at least hold that potential?
All these questions and more are worth considering when discussing Primer, the feature film debut by writer/director/producer/editor/composer/star Shane Carruth. Subscribing to the Robert Rodriguez/Bobby Bowfinger ethos of filmmaking — that movies should really only cost a few thousand dollars to make — Primer was produced for $7,000 and first premiered at Sundance in 2004, where it was, somewhat miraculously given its immediate parsability, awarded the Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s highest honor. And yet, despite only running a scant 77 minutes, the film often feels as dense as a black hole. Carruth takes a clinically impenetrable approach to his work, demonstrating an unconscionable amount of erudition and virtually zero regard for the easy digestibility of anyone watching it. It’s inaccessible by design, even if one carved out time to obtain a Ph.D. in Physics and subjected themselves to several hours of YouTube videos, but 20 years later, Primer remains a terrific and singular debut, assured and unflappable in its execution.
Even for those familiar with the film, any hope that this writing will be a mere play-by-play or well-thought-out interpretation of “What Happens” in Primer will be sorely disappointed. All you need to know is that the film centers around two engineers, Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth), as they conduct experiments out of the latter’s garage. While initially working on a device to reduce the gravity of an object, they inadvertently unlock the ability to travel through time. Now, unlike nearly every other representation of time travel in science fiction, this particular mode is decidedly not instantaneous; what Abe and Aaron do is turn on a device known only as “the box,” and then let it run with the intention to return to it many hours later. By inserting themselves in the box, they can then travel back to the initial point of the box’s activation. “Is it safe?” Aaron asks. “I can imagine no way in which this thing could be considered anywhere remotely close to safe,” Abe stone-facedly responds. Undeterred by the potentially cataclysmic effects of their earth-shattering scientific discovery, the pair go through with their time travel anyway, first to play the stock market, then to foolishly rewrite events in their recent history. As these things go, ground rules are quickly established: they can’t bring cell phones or interact with anyone they know, and they must spend their newfound time almost exclusively sequestered in hotel rooms to avoid raising suspicion. Like all things created by hubris, it’s only a matter of time before this all goes horribly wrong for Abe and Aaron, resulting in the dissolution of their partnership.
Primer can essentially be chalked up to a baldly thematic “absolute power corrupts absolutely” narrative, but the pleasure of the film lies in the conviction of its presentation and investigation, not its messaging. Most films — arguably too many — go out of their way to hold the audience’s hand, and this is especially true of science-centric movies, indulging in over-explaining and underlining in order to avoid any sense of confusion, like a haphazard cascade of life rafts thrown out to sea. Carruth dispenses with any such hand-holding pleasantries right from the opening scene, thrusting audiences into an unfamiliar world of his design where characters rattle off jargony technobabble and the plot hurtles forward — or perhaps in a spiral? — with increasing speed. There’s no proper on-ramp to Primer; you either get on its daunting wavelength and experience the whelm of bewilderment or remain hopelessly lost and frustrated while floundering for scientific legibility.
For those willing to submit themselves to Carruth’s vision, Primer does reward multiple viewings. Character machinations can be gleaned in broad strokes from the primary viewing, but ensuing watches allow multiple theories to play out, such as how the Aaron and Abe we’ve come to know and are seemingly watching discover this phenomenon for the first time are actually several cycles deep into their experiment, with one perpetually maintaining purchase over the other. Working with a minuscule budget, Carruth pares the visual scheme of Primer down to its most functional properties, staging the majority of the film in garages, storage lockers, and hotel rooms. The film reportedly boasts a 2:1 shooting ratio, meaning nearly every frame of film that was shot was used in the final cut. Performances tend to come off like rehearsal footage, but that natural effect functions more as a feature than a bug, as Carruth drops his characters into an unknown and potentially dangerous situation. Years later, it is Carruth’s confidence that remains most impressive, displaying a real knack behind the camera that is too rare in established veterans, let alone debut directors.
Audiences would spend nearly a decade waiting to see just how Carruth would top his first creation, and he delivered in spades with 2013’s ethereal masterpiece, Upstream Color. While shaking off the more restrained formalism of Primer, Upstream Color was no less heady, requiring an intuitive approach to penetrate its oneiric atmosphere and solidifying Carruth as a legitimate visionary. Many, including this writer, were left eagerly waiting to see what he would do next, which makes the subsequent implosion of his personal life amidst discomfiting domestic allegations all the more disappointing, with his return to the medium all the more unlikely. But even if he is out of the game for good, the strength and lingering impact of his work remains unassailable, challenging in the way great cinema should be. Just don’t let a TikTok explanation diminish the experience.
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