Film Primer

[alasdairm]

one of the things i loved about it was that the viewer is kept in the dark for so long - we learn the facts of the project very slowly and it takes a long time for what's going on to sink in...

alasdair

 

[dapurpman]

just watched it, like others i found it hard to follow, but kept me interested to the end cause i though it was all going to be laid out. but heck still not sure what really is all about.

another cool flick i probally wouldnt of come across if it wasn't for this forum. =)

/me goes n' reads the wiki page.

also for being made for only $7000. i tell ya from viewing it i couldnt even tell it was made on such a cheap budget. really well filmed.

 

[ego_loss]

one of the things i loved about it was that the viewer is kept in the dark for so long - we learn the facts of the project very slowly and it takes a long time for what's going on to sink in...

alasdair

We (the viewer) aren't so much "kept in the dark" as we are figuring it all out on the same pace as the characters. It's a third-person limited point of view done to absolute perfection. We don't learn the facts any slower than the characters in the movie learn the facts.

Yeah, the first fifteen minutes might be boring engineering techno-babble, but the confusion you first experience ends up being the key to the sublime genius of the story.

Anyone I recommend this movie to, I always finish with the declaration that they shouldn't try to make any sense of the movie... at all. Simply press play and watch. There is no real linear order to the story, no tidy story line or ending. The movie is what it is... literally. It is confusing because the characters themselves become confused.

I cannot express how much I love this movie in words. I haven't been so floored by a movie since I saw "Being John Malkovich". I just wish there were more movies like this.

 

[TheDeceased]

Well, I've got to say that I really disliked this film. I don't know where to start.

It's "confusing because the characters become confused"?

Because time overlaps itself?

Because of endless paradoxes?

I'm not sure if I care why it was confusing. I don't want to watch something that I need to struggle to understand, and then rewatch (possibly repeatedly) to totally grasp.

I don't mind admitting that I don't fully understand 'Primer' and that I'm not at all compelled to attempt to understand it.

I don't think it required very much skill to produce. Obviously pretty much everybody else in this thread disagrees with me there, which frankly I find astonishing.

I mean, how is it an accomplishment to make a film that is riddled with paradoxes?

Simply because it hasn't been done before?

I think the film-makers were trying way too hard to be clever and by doing so, they lost the point of making a film, which is to entertain people or portray some sort of message.

The film is like a jig-saw puzzle. It's just as pointless and time-consuming. I could spend hours piecing it all together and come up with my own scene by scene explanations (google 'Primer Explanation' and see how many people have attempted to break this film down and understand it), but I don't see the point.

I'd rather move on and watch something else.

Before reading the responses on this thread, I would have said something like: 'if you like reading Shakespeare and working out what every little pun and reference means then this is your sort of film'... But now I don't know what to say. 'Cause obviously the average bluelighter isn't an obsessive fan of the most over-rated writer of all time.

Maybe if I hadn't been completely sober it would have fascinated me.

I don't know, I really don't get it.

I don't like my films spoon fed to me, but I like to get something out of the cinema experience aside from being slightly intrigued by overly mysterious narratives that are far too complicated for their own good.

 

[Jamshyd]

I would like to see this one.

I actually have no idea how I bumped into it, but it was through following a link on wikipedia, which contained this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_Travel_Method-2.svg

I can't put it on here because it is in .svg format. But it seems to explain the concept pretty well. I feel like I may have seen a spoiler before the film by looking at it. But oh well. Maybe some of the confused posters here can find it useful?

 

[TheDeceased]

I wouldn't be worried about reading a spoiler. It'd probably be useful if anything.

Hell you could probably read the entire script before watching the film and still be confused by it.

 

[Evad]

the five star rating that's just been added to this poll kind of makes all the votes cast before it was added obsolete doesn't it?

 

[L2R]

i get the annoying "figure this out for elitism" feeling only from retarded twist movies, many examples of which can be seen in m night shyamalan films. i can see that argument being used for good films like stuff by lynch or others like "memento".

but i didn't get that feeling from this movie. i just led the experience ride me (much like lynch stuff) and the complexity never bothered me. actually, i felt that it was quite simple on my second and most recent viewing and didn't enjoy it much for that reason. I dunno, i might have been drinking or something.

 

[TheDeceased]

Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I also had massively high expectations given the number of reccomendations on the D9 thread... but one thing that really detracted from my ability to understand it (that I haven't already mentioned) was the sound recording. In quite a few scenes I had to struggle to hear what was being said over the sound of traffic/ other atmospheric sounds.. but maybe that was intentional (or at least justified as so in order to take attention away from the fact that the boom operator/ sound rec guys seemingly had no idea what they were doing - maybe they couldn't afford decent microphones, who knows). Regardless, I've seen a lot of first year university films with better production values.

Memento made perfect sense to me the first time I saw it, whereas this just gave me a headache. The only Lynch film I would compare this to is Inland Empire, which I disliked for the same reasons. In fact - 'Primer'. 'Inland Empire' and 'A Zed & Two Noughts' are the only three films that I can think of that truly fall into this category (for me).

 

[AmorRoark]

I'm pretty positive it was done on purpose.

 

[daysonatrain]

amazing movie.

 

[TheDeceased]

I'm pretty positive it was done on purpose.

What was the point?

 

[L2R]

*guessing* realism to juxtapose the fantastic premise.

or as you said, cost saving perhaps.

 

[TheDeceased]

Yeah but it's not realistic to have the sound of traffic that much louder than people's voices. When you film something without taking into consideration where the mic is pointing or without bothering to check your levels, background noises become amplified to unusual levels that don't reflect reality.

 

[L2R]

your critique is sound

 

[TheDeceased]

I am god.

 

[ego_loss]

Still on my top 10.

 

[soul scientist]

Easily my favorite film.

 

[SackFromTheBack]

Film: Primer

Has anyone seen the movie Primer? It's kind of an indie, "mind-bending science-thriller". I stumbled across it on Netflix a few weeks ago and it's now one of my favorites. Very original and keeps you guessing the entire time, not to mention thinking about it and trying to figure it out days after you watch it.

I was going to post a trailer for the movie, but they really don't do the movie justice if you haven't seen it.

None of my friends have seen it so I don't really have anyone to chat with about it, and believe me, this movie needs to be chatted about.

If you don't have netflix, I think you can just google "Primer Movie" and watch the whole thing through google video at a slightly lower quality.

 

[Feste]

Been meaning to watch this for a while, seems to have a ton of fans around the net.