Titravelme

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I watched the move Primer a couple nights ago.

As said, it was a movie custom-made for me. Time travel, stock trading, engineering… if one of the characters had done comedy improv on the side, I would have had to assume I wrote it and just forgot.

But I will admit, I was mostly lost by the end of the film. I had a vague sense of what had happened, but I was totally confused on the details. And it pains me to say it, because I consider myself fairly adept at following time travel stories. I ran the movie back and rewatched it from the point I got lost, and still couldn’t piece together exactly what was happening.

Thankfully, wikipedia came to the rescue where someone had worked out what had happened, and explained it fairly clearly.

They used my favorite time-travel convention, which is that the act of going back in time creates a new time branch splitting at the moment the time traveler from the future appears. This resolves a lot of paradox issues, and you can successfully kill yourself without dying. The writer also created a few other conventions that make for a plausible and dramatic story.

The engineering dialog was extremely good as well. It was all gobbledygook, but it was written such that they didn’t use a term in a way that didn’t make sense, or make up any words. They give you snippets of plausible technical dialog that in themselves are reasonable, but adding them all up gives you nothing but the impression that they’re really working on something real.

Back to the Future failed on both of the above accounts (fading pictures? “flux capacitor”?), and and I spent too much time really smashing those films apart several years ago, in the days before IM. Back to the Future created dramatic situations, but only by sacrificing good time travel conventions and creating plot holes large enough to drive several Deloreans through. Honestly, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure did better on the conventions, and they weren’t really even trying.

Anyway, if you enjoyed Memento, I think you’d enjoy Primer.

11 thoughts on “Titravelme”

  1. A Coat of Primer

    I felt the same way about Primer — after I saw it, Eleanor Ringel and Steve Murray and I were talking after leaving the theater, and we agreed that the last act was incomprehensible. I know that it’s that way “on purpose” — the director said in an interview that it’s all mapped out — but I can’t figure out what it gains beyond the feeling of lost control and chaos. (It’s not like it follows the point of view of a single character, who doesn’t know what’s going on.)

    I will say that it’s the best Philip K. Dick movie ever made, without being an actual adaptation of Dick. But I haven’t seen ‘A Scanner Darkly.’

    • How can you not have seen A Scanner Darkly, Curt? You’re a movie critic! You’re my movie critic! Seeing movies like A Scanner Darkly is what you’re for!

      • A Reviewer Darkly

        Because Felicia got dibs on it and I couldn’t swing seeing the screening in my “spare time.” Plus, I know it’ll be out on DVD before the end of the year, so I’ll have the chance to play catch-up with that one for Best-of-2006 consideration. ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ will probably be the same way for me.

  3. I also lost the plot bubble about mid-way through the film, and I haven’t yet taken the time to read that Wikipedia entry.

    I know that the two men doubled themselves at least a couple of times, and that one of the doubles that we maybe hadn’t even met created the “failsafe” unit. But that’s all I could figure out.

    Every critic of the movie has said, and I agree, and you seem to as well, that while nobody understands all the dialogue in the beginning sequence, that’s actually a good thing, because they’re talking about things that we wouldn’t understand, if they were talking about some highly technical project.

    The characters themselves seem to understand everything they say, and that’s what matters.

    • You should read the wikipedia article. When I was done, I said to myself, “Aaaah, yes, that was a good plot.” The only thing I still don’t understand is who the third guy was who “found” the time machine and got into it somehow. I get the feeling he wasn’t introduced in the first act, but maybe I missed it.

      I’ve heard it said that some people believe that Shakespeare had a great many occupations besides playwright, because he wrote so accurately about various trades.

      This guy is either technical, or he got someone technical to closely advise/co-write.

      • You should read the wikipedia article.

        I did, and by the time I got to Timeline 4, the putative “really complicated timeline,” I was already lost.

        The only thing I still don’t understand is who the third guy was who “found” the time machine and got into it somehow.

        He was “Mr. Granger,” which implies a relationship with Rachel, whose last name was also Granger. Father, maybe?

        This guy is either technical, or he got someone technical to closely advise/co-write.

        The same Wikipedia article says that he had a degree in math and had worked as an engineer, and that he taught himself physics in the course of writing the screenplay.

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