"what's worse? Thinking you're being paranoid or knowing you should be?" This tagline says it all, I'm watching my shoulders every 2 seconds right now in case a me from the future come back to kill me now. Yep, that's how immersive this film was!
I downloaded this film from google video, and watched it on my PSP, the audio with slightly out of sync (approx +1.5 seconds). It is a very good film, I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes thoughtful sci-fi, such as "2001"; "Solaris" [Rus]; "12 monkeys"; "Vanilla sky"; etc... I regret watching it the first time through on such a poor quality media, I would recommend you rent the DVD, or buy it if you are the obsessive type.
Overview
Primer is an US sci-fi film shot by a little known director, on a extremely low budget of $7000. The crew is basically the actors + cameraman / director. Because it doesn't have the money for CGI and special effects, and action scenes with big explosive, etc, so it has to rely solely on a thought provoking storyline to keep you watching the film. It does that extremely well.
The story (no spoilers)
Four engineers works on small projects in their spare time in one of them's garage, for fun and the possibility of making something profitable. A "time machine" was made, and two of them becomes aware of this... They are normal people, who are greedy and selfish, and this leads to paradoxes. What paradoxes? You have to watch the film to find out, though I can't promise you that will be enough.
The film
The acting is very good, especially considering they couldn't afford the film to shoot a scene too many times. The camera work is documentary style, but with big aperture over exposure. The close up scenes exploits depth of field effects a lot, with shifting focus in a few scenes. I don't know how much post production effects were added, and I didn't have it in good enough quality to comment on the details, but I could say this: The general colour and feel of the movie is quite professional, and if you didn't know anything about this film before hand, then you would think it's just as good as any other independent film.
The technology
The picture is taken from wikipedia, I found it extremely useful:
[b][u]A few more words from me[/u][/b]
You will not be able to understand everything the first time you see this film, but if you kept your wits about you, ignore all the technical engineering stuff the guys throw, and focus on the people, who they are and what their motives are, then you should be able to understand as much of the film as you need to.
If you are the type who really wants to know what the story is, and what exactly happened in the film, then I have the following advice for you when you are watching it (Contains spoilers):
[spoiler]
Aaron = black hair. He is married to Kara, who is doing laundry in one of the scenes. He has a daughter.
Abe = blond hair. He and Rachel are more than friends, but are not living together. Thomas Granger is a Venture Capitalist, he is also Rachel's dad.
[b]1) Aaron wears the earphone in his left ear only[/b]
shots explicitly showing his left ear without an earphone means that is the Aaron who is not listening to the recordings. Many scenes only show the right side of his face, thats mean this could be any of the copies of Aaron.
Aaron's left ear bleeds because he has spent so long listening to recordings, this is the Aaron who is recursively using the time machine.
[b]2) The Thomas Granger problem[/b]
As the narrator says, the answer is unknowable. But you could have a guess at it if you want to.
[b]3) How many copies of themselves?[/b]
Ignore the recursive Aaron, because there is only one copy of him at the end of the film.
There are three theories floating around:
2 Aaron; 2 Abe (I prefer this one. For this to work, the recursive Aaron is the original Aaron who the hooded Aaron drugged, whether he knows of time travel and travels back to save Rachel or not, is dependent on what Abe' does at the end of the film. Aaron is receiving calls from himself, and the narrator is Aaron' calling Abe.)
3 Aaron; 2 Abe (The most popular theory. The 3 Aarons are: The drugged original who doesn't know about time travel; Aaron' who leaves for France at the end and he is the narrator leaving the message for Aaron''; Aaron'' who goes back in time recursively to save Rachel.)
Many Aaron; many Abe (Most variants of this are too complicated to be plausible, but there is a very good one explained all in a diagram: http://www.freeweb.hu/neuwanstein/primer_timeline.jpg)
There is only one single definitive timeline that is actuality, as the film says "the last revision is what counts."
[b]OK, with the above points in mind and having seen the movie again, you should have a much better idea of what's going on.[/b]
[/spoiler]
I downloaded this film from google video, and watched it on my PSP, the audio with slightly out of sync (approx +1.5 seconds). It is a very good film, I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes thoughtful sci-fi, such as "2001"; "Solaris" [Rus]; "12 monkeys"; "Vanilla sky"; etc... I regret watching it the first time through on such a poor quality media, I would recommend you rent the DVD, or buy it if you are the obsessive type.
Overview
Primer is an US sci-fi film shot by a little known director, on a extremely low budget of $7000. The crew is basically the actors + cameraman / director. Because it doesn't have the money for CGI and special effects, and action scenes with big explosive, etc, so it has to rely solely on a thought provoking storyline to keep you watching the film. It does that extremely well.
The story (no spoilers)
Four engineers works on small projects in their spare time in one of them's garage, for fun and the possibility of making something profitable. A "time machine" was made, and two of them becomes aware of this... They are normal people, who are greedy and selfish, and this leads to paradoxes. What paradoxes? You have to watch the film to find out, though I can't promise you that will be enough.
The film
The acting is very good, especially considering they couldn't afford the film to shoot a scene too many times. The camera work is documentary style, but with big aperture over exposure. The close up scenes exploits depth of field effects a lot, with shifting focus in a few scenes. I don't know how much post production effects were added, and I didn't have it in good enough quality to comment on the details, but I could say this: The general colour and feel of the movie is quite professional, and if you didn't know anything about this film before hand, then you would think it's just as good as any other independent film.
The technology
The picture is taken from wikipedia, I found it extremely useful:
[b][u]A few more words from me[/u][/b]
You will not be able to understand everything the first time you see this film, but if you kept your wits about you, ignore all the technical engineering stuff the guys throw, and focus on the people, who they are and what their motives are, then you should be able to understand as much of the film as you need to.
If you are the type who really wants to know what the story is, and what exactly happened in the film, then I have the following advice for you when you are watching it (Contains spoilers):
[spoiler]
Aaron = black hair. He is married to Kara, who is doing laundry in one of the scenes. He has a daughter.
Abe = blond hair. He and Rachel are more than friends, but are not living together. Thomas Granger is a Venture Capitalist, he is also Rachel's dad.
[b]1) Aaron wears the earphone in his left ear only[/b]
shots explicitly showing his left ear without an earphone means that is the Aaron who is not listening to the recordings. Many scenes only show the right side of his face, thats mean this could be any of the copies of Aaron.
Aaron's left ear bleeds because he has spent so long listening to recordings, this is the Aaron who is recursively using the time machine.
[b]2) The Thomas Granger problem[/b]
As the narrator says, the answer is unknowable. But you could have a guess at it if you want to.
[b]3) How many copies of themselves?[/b]
Ignore the recursive Aaron, because there is only one copy of him at the end of the film.
There are three theories floating around:
2 Aaron; 2 Abe (I prefer this one. For this to work, the recursive Aaron is the original Aaron who the hooded Aaron drugged, whether he knows of time travel and travels back to save Rachel or not, is dependent on what Abe' does at the end of the film. Aaron is receiving calls from himself, and the narrator is Aaron' calling Abe.)
3 Aaron; 2 Abe (The most popular theory. The 3 Aarons are: The drugged original who doesn't know about time travel; Aaron' who leaves for France at the end and he is the narrator leaving the message for Aaron''; Aaron'' who goes back in time recursively to save Rachel.)
Many Aaron; many Abe (Most variants of this are too complicated to be plausible, but there is a very good one explained all in a diagram: http://www.freeweb.hu/neuwanstein/primer_timeline.jpg)
There is only one single definitive timeline that is actuality, as the film says "the last revision is what counts."
[b]OK, with the above points in mind and having seen the movie again, you should have a much better idea of what's going on.[/b]
[/spoiler]
