A Primer In How To Show Promise But Not Really Deliver
Written: Jan 08 '05
Product Rating:
Pros: not the film itself, but the promise it shows in young director Shane Carruth
Cons: well, pretty much the film itself. Too soft and muddled in its focus.
The Bottom Line: The film mistakes being unfocused for being profound and ambiguous. The fact none of the leads showed acting ability didn't help either.
Shane Carruth .... Aaron
David Sullivan .... Abe
Casey Gooden .... Robert
Anand Upadhyaya .... Phillip
Carrie Crawford .... Kara
Jay Butler .... Metalshop Worker
John Carruth .... Man On Couch #1
Juan Tapia .... Man On Couch #2
Ashley Warren .... Hostess
Aaron, Abe, Robert and Philip have built a machine that appears to be some sort of time travel device. One that seems to turn itself on and off and grow on its own as well. Each time one of them uses it, there's a risk that the time-travelling self will encounter the "regular" self. Each appears to be moving in time to build and perfect the machine.
Primer comes complete with conundrums and riddles but unfortunately the film mirrors the makers of the device too closely. The characters know they're on to something but don't know exactly what. A film like this should have an ironclad grip on its directions and purposes and should, eventually, go somewhere.
Several directions offer glimpses of future directorial and story telling promise. The script alludes to surprising changes in the film's main friendship between Aaron and Abe as they encounter different versions of each other in various stages of time travelling. I've never encountered a time-travel film that even mentioned let alone developed this sort of character-driven focus. Unfortunately neither of the actors shows any sort of promise they can carry it off.
Primer's one of those films that could have benefitted from a glitzier more money Hollywood focus treatment -- or something -- anything to develop and shape such promising ideas. Shooting in Super 8 in what appears to be an industrial park lends itself to emphasizing complete lack of visual texture. Pi overcame this with memorable visuals of the wiring in Max's computer and apartment and by bleaching the white tones to a kind of glowing overcast look. Memento used its cheap and seedy locales to make an indelible impression of cheap and seedy L.A.
Clearly Primer wants to take a page or two from these two great films and, on top of that, throw in its very overt infatuation with the sci-fi of Philip K. Dick (the short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" became "Total Recall") and William Gibson ("Johny Mnemonic" -- and the first rule of Johny Mnemonic is you do not talk about the film version of "Johny Mnemonic"). Promising ideas and promising influences perhaps added up to loads of expectations going in, but the fact remains the story confuses and confounds not because it's so profound but because it is so shapeless and random that any tension -- any story simply slowly leaks away.
Lots of plotholes and headscratching. If those could all have been attributable to the built-in natures of the various conundrums of time travel it could have been good -- provided the film had come complete with a tight and rigorous focus on a story that evolved out of such conundrums.
With first films from first-time director/actors ambition counts in the ratings. Shane Carruth shows promise and yeah I'll be in line for the next movie in what I believe will be a long and fruitful career. But Primer will be seen mostly as a somewhat promising piece whose ideas were more fully developed and focused in later works.
Here are some examples off the top of my head of TV shows and movies that did this better.
The episode of Star Trek Next Generation where Captain Picard and the crew discover the shuttlecraft from several hours in the future that contains an unconscious Captain Picard. The series finale was also magnificent with these aspects of time travel.
Terminator and Terminator 2. And we all know what those were about.
Minority Report. Not so much for time travel but predicting the future, and the surprisingly illustrative ways it brings to light the conundrums and paradoxes involved.
Everything You Think You Know About Modern Science Ia About To, Unravel In This Critically Acclaimed Film About Two Young, Engineers & The Consequence...More at HotMovieSale.com
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