Primer

I must admit that for the first 20 to 30 minutes of watching Primer I had no idea what the characters were talking about. As an animal science major physics is like a foreign language to me so I had trouble paying attention to the movie. As the film progressed it became clear that they were building a time machine and travelling to the future and past. However, I didn't think that the movie got any more interesting. The film made time travel seem almost mundane, the opposite of what I think of when I imagine that kind of technology. I thought that this was an interesting way of presenting the idea of time travel, rather than focusing on the advanced technology that would be required or the logic of time travelling, ethics seemed to be the central theme. This I also found interesting because the characters themselves don’t address the ethics or potential consequences of their endeavors. Primer met the director’s objective of being the kind of film that you don’t fully comprehend after the first viewing. In hindsight I enjoyed the film more than I initially thought. I left class kind of bored and frustrated with the film, but after some reflection I came to appreciate it. As I found answers to the initial questions I had about Primer I developed new queries about the plot. I appreciated that although Primer seemed boring and confusing at glance, it has many layers of complexity that allow the film to be revisited over and over with a new result. Sean Carruth and his film are a testament to the fact that you don’t need to spend millions of dollars to thrill audiences if you begin with a well thought out story.