Primer (film)

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Movie
German title Primer
Original title Primer
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2004
length 77 minutes
Age rating FSK / JMK not checked
Rod
Director Shane Carruth
script Shane Carruth
production Shane Carruth
music Shane Carruth
cut Shane Carruth
occupation

Primer is an American science fiction film directed by Shane Carruth in 2004, which is about the accidental discovery of a time machine and its consequences. The film is characterized by a very low budget of only $ 7,000, sophisticated technical dialogues and an unorthodox narrative structure. At the 2004 Sundance Film Festival he won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award for films that deal with science and technology. In Germany, the film was shown for the first time on July 28, 2005 as part of the Fantasy Film Festival .

action

Time travel sequence in Primer .

Engineers Aaron, Abe, Robert and Phillip build JTAG cards in their spare time , which they then sell and finance scientific projects. After a dispute about their next goal, Aaron and Abe start on their own to implement a machine that can reduce the mass of objects. After completing a prototype, they find that the machine is delivering more electricity than it consumes. The two decide to remain silent about the project until they have found out exactly how this effect works.

After several months, Abe found out that within a few days a fungus in the machine had grown to a size that would actually take years. Further experiments lead him and Aaron to the assumption that objects in the machine remain in a loop between the time they enter the machine and the time it is switched on, which they break through only after many passes, so that much more time passes from the perspective of the object is. They suspect that a person can break this loop by leaving the machine on their own and can thus travel backwards through time.

Abe secretly builds and tests a prototype big enough for a human. He turns the box on in the morning and gets in later in the day, taking him back until shortly after turning on the machine. When the test is positive, he tells Aaron about it. The two build a second box and repeat Abe's procedure the next day, but this time use the time in the hotel room to watch share prices. After traveling back, they use their knowledge of the price action to make money. They repeat this procedure for a while until one day they are followed on the way to the machines by Thomas Granger, the father of Abe's friend Rachel, whom they wanted to win as an investor. Although Aaron saw him shaved a few hours earlier, he now looks like his beard has grown for several days. They believe that Granger traveled several days into the future with one of the boxes from some point in time, even though they cannot explain how he found out about the time machines. When they try to confront him, he passes out.

Abe uses a third box that ran for emergencies since the day he first traveled through time to return to that day. He numbs his former self and takes his place, but when he meets with Aaron, regardless of Abe's remarks, he says exactly the same thing as in the situation when it happened the first time. Abe collapses. When he wakes up again, Aaron explains to him that, having traveled back in time, he had been given a record of all the day's conversations from an earlier version of himself. They found the emergency box and used it to take themselves and the components for another time machine back in time, where they assembled them and swapped them with Abe's emergency box, so that Abe can still travel back and would not find Aaron's body in the emergency box. Then this later version of Aaron left the city. The day Abe first used the time machine was Robert's birthday party, where Rachel's ex-boyfriend threatened her with a gun. Aaron invited him and feels guilty about it. His plan is to stop Rachel's ex-boyfriend and put him behind bars.

Aaron and Abe continue to pursue this plan together. It is implied that they go through the same evening several times until they stage the perfect rescue and succeed. After that, however, the two fall out and go their separate ways. The version of Aaron, who took the recordings and then left town, tells the whole story on the phone to a stranger to whom he apparently owes something and then starts building a time machine the size of a warehouse.

production

After completing his mathematics studies, Carruth first worked as an engineer in various companies before he decided, after a few attempts as an author, to pursue a career in film. Over the course of a year, he developed the script, also digging deep into physics to keep his characters' conversations as authentic as possible.

The film was shot in various private homes in Dallas over a period of five weeks. Despite the low budget, Carruth decided to use analog 35 mm film, which meant that every scene was initially rehearsed in detail without cameras, as recording several takes would have been too expensive.

reception

Primer was mainly received positively. Rotten Tomatoes states that 73% of the reviews were positive and 79% of the viewers rated the film as good (as of June 2020). According to Metacritic , critics gave an average of 68 out of 100 points.

Kim Newman of the Empire describes the plot of the film as "as much a mystery as a story" and recommends the film only to viewers who are already familiar with the time travel material. Other critics, such as Michael O'Sullivan of the Washington Post , think the film is overly complicated. O'Sullivan writes that the film was cut "with a sense of concealment that appears deliberately, almost perverted, to prevent pleasure (or simple understanding)," and criticizes the film for taking the effort into full understanding must be practiced, does not reward appropriately.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.primermovie.com/story.html#about (accessed August 4, 2012)
  2. ↑ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/primer
  3. ↑ https://www.metacritic.com/movie/primer
  4. ↑ Kim Newman, "Primer" (accessed September 26, 2012)
  5. ↑ David O'Sullivan, 'Primer': A Closed Book (accessed September 26, 2012)

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