Primer (2004)

Director: Shane Carruth
Writer: Shane Carruth
Starring: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya
Rated: PG-13

There is a buddy of mine who does not particularly like what I would consider to be "good drama", nor does he really care about the intricacies that are involved in making such a film. For him, a good movie makes him laugh with all of the inane, idiotic, pathetic attempts at humor which make me cringe. There is one thing that I will give him credit for, however, and that is that he is a stickler for the fairness that comes along with science fiction. By this I mean that a sci-fi film can be as outlandish and absurd as it wants to be, reaching far beyond what we know to be real and true, so long as the script follows its own rules. In this sense he is sort of my go-to guy on time travel films, as he doesn't care whether or not they are "good drama", but lasers in on whether these films have stayed true to themselves.

Writer-director-producer-star Shane Carruth has made a movie which I believe would pass his stringent guidelines, and one that I know has passed mine. On an unthinkably small budget of $7,000 and filmed mainly in a garage and a storage unit, Carruth has produced an intense and smart film about four friends who stumble into making a machine which can transport them through time.

Aaron (Carruth), Abe (David Sullivan) and their two friends spend nights and weekends in Aaron's garage, in their suits perfecting their error-checking devices. They are the sort of men that our generation is spitting out by the thousands in top universities--smart, but not ultra-smart. Tenacious, but indistinguishable fish in an ocean. Modifying what I will hereon refer to as "the box", Aaron and Abe, sensing the lack of vision of their associates, produce a machine which they soon learn to be something too big and powerful to be marketed. It is something too new for them to understand.

Impenetrable jargon for much of this tiny movie keeps the audience stumbling along, as lost as Aaron and Abe as they try to make sense of their discovery. Soon they grasp that the box can transport matter through time: a Weeble entering the device at point A will make its journey and return at point A at a specific time. But the Weeble is inanimate and does not realize that it can exit at point B. If a cognizant creature were to do that, he could enter at A, exit at B and leave a duplicant behind at A. I haven't the slightest idea if I have the pseudo-science right, but Carruth explains it with such conviction that I couldn't help but agree.

Following the paths that many of us would take in such a situation the two men, keeping their secret from their mates, start playing with stocks, discovering that in spite of the physical repercussions of tampering with a volatile and mysterious piece of machinery they can control their own destiny. Dinner parties are reproduced time and again to achieve perfection; stocks and professional athletics are bet on to earn tremendous wealth. At first they are careful, taking all precautions to ensure they are playing it safe, but as time passes of course they become careless.

The film evolves into a thriller which I grasped at, but ultimately lost. I'm not a dumb guy, I know when an ending is opaque, and this one was a brick wall. It is a short movie and one which moves quickly. What's more, it doesn't give a fig if it leaves the audience behind. In a way I felt that Carruth was very much like his characters: poor and full of gumption. He seems like a pit bull who has been let off his leash to chase a cat. Foaming at the mouth, all he knows is he needs to run, run, run. I am very out of shape it seems.

Where the plot takes us isn't exactly new territory, but those many first moments in which the science is gone through--not in a condescending way, but in a necessary and fully justifiable one--were very fresh and commendable. Frankly, I didn't really care what happened to Aaron and Abe, their friendship or their duplicates; all I cared about was the believable way in which a few entrepreneurs handled the uncharted territory of new science. I've recommended the film to my buddy, we'll have to wait and see if it's fair in the end.

3/4