Primer (2004) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Tomorrow’s just another day, and I don’t believe in time.

Even though I’ve been writing these science-fiction articles for over five years, I may be unqualified to adequately discuss the events and nuances of Primer. This is probably the hardest sci-fi film (both in terms of content and thematically) that has been released up to this point. It’s definitely quite a trip!

First Impressions

The trailer for this film truly gives no information about what lies inside. Titles ask “what is essential” and “what is wanted,” with answers popping up like food, shelter, safety, family, and then the word “done.” But “what is truly wanted” is then asked while images of people in homes, storage facilities, and pools are shown. The answer summarized after dozens of words flash by is “to fix it all.” If you’ve never seen Primer, you’re in for a mind-blowing ride.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

The film opens with four men working on homebrew electronics projects in Aaron’s (Shane Carruth) garage after their normal 50-hour-a-week job at a tech firm. Abe (David Sullivan) puts forth the next idea to work on, and he and Aaron begin building a device, slowly leaving Robert (Casey Gooden) and Philip (Anand Upadhyaya) out. One night, Aaron and Abe discover that their device, only referred to as “the box,” creates an anti-gravity field that is measurable on a Weeble before it blows a circuit. A few days later, Aaron picks up Abe at his place and suggests getting a steak. The box is creating a stable feedback loop. Aaron demonstrates that by disconnecting the batteries by which the device continues to run for a few minutes.

They agree to leave Phillip and Robert in the dark as they discuss the ramifications of the value of the device. Aaron and Abe decide to understand the device as they finally get funding from Thomas Granger (Chip Carruth). One morning (a Monday), Abe approaches Aaron–who’s listening to a March Madness game in his earpiece–at a park bench and tells him he has something important to show him. Abe had a fungus that appeared on the Weeble, tested. The amount that showed up in five days is equivalent to 5-6 years of growth. They test their device by putting a watch inside and discover that the box is a time machine of some kind. Anything inside loops around and around, between the ‘A’ end and the ‘B’ end, parabolically until it exits.

Abe explains that if the object could enter at the ‘B’ end and exit at the ‘A’ end, they’d be time traveling. He then takes Aaron to a storage facility outside of town to prove to him what Abe already knows. The two men see another Abe enter the facility. They follow him in and Abe shows Aaron the full-sized version of the box he built and used to repeat this day over again. The next day (Tuesday), Abe takes Aaron to show him the process. The two men start the box at the storage facility and then sequester themselves out of town in a hotel, unplugging the TV and phone to avoid causality. At the end of the day, they look up the best stock trade of the day, return to the storage facility, wait for the box to cycle down, and climb inside.

After some disorienting time later they emerge from the box on Tuesday morning–earlier that same day. They buy some stock shares and then go back to Aaron’s to celebrate. He asks his wife, Kara (Carrie Crawford), what she’d do if money was no object. Aaron thinks he’d like to do things and then go back and tell himself not to do them. The duo repeats the procedure for a third day (Wednesday). After the trip through the box, Aaron realizes he’s bleeding from his ear. That evening Abe hears from Robert that Aaron is a hero, having stopped a man with a shotgun at his birthday party on Monday night. Abe chastises Aaron that evening for risking his life. The next day (Thursday) they repeat the process again, but Aaron is careless and has his cell phone with him which rings while they’re sequestered.

Later, after they have time-traveled Aaron’s phone rings again. They realize they have altered something about the day. Early in the morning on Friday Abe shows up at Aaron’s convinced that they should follow Aaron’s early idea and assault Platts (a man that stole a lucrative previous idea from them). Abe has been starting the boxes earlier in the morning and believes they can get back before he wakes Aaron up, thereby skipping that event. They are followed by a man they believe is Thomas Granger but with a multi-day beard. When they call his cell phone, Granger answers–at home in his bed. Something has gone very wrong.

Abe heads for his failsafe device, another box that has been running since early on Monday morning, and travels back to the same scene in the park with Aaron. However, Aaron is revealed to be an alternate version of himself as well. He discovered Abe’s failsafe and has been traveling back over and over again in order to create a perfect moment–saving everyone from a gun-wielding man at a birthday party. Aaron has drugged his original self and locked him in the attic. He then records the day in order to memorize the events and play the part perfectly. Realizing this is all out of control, Abe confronts Aaron and they decide to go their separate ways. Abe stays in town, while Aaron leaves town. At the end of the film, another Aaron, in France, instructs workers to build a bigger machine, the size of the warehouse.

“Their enthusiasm became a slow realization that they were out of their depth.” – Aaron the Narrator

History in the Making

Primer may be one of the few science-fiction films that more people have heard of rather than seen. The film, written, produced, and directed by first-time filmmaker Shane Carruth (who also filmed, edited, composed the music, and acted) is a testament to low-budget filmmaking. Made for a reported $7000, Primer has a distinctive look and feel of lower-budget films–due to the use of 16mm film stock rather than 35mm film or video–but exceeds many elements of what audiences would call ‘B’ movies. It is not “cheap-looking,” and forgoes many chances to utilize special effects–which would have affected the high production design–and instead uses editing (both sound and image) and camera placement to create the necessary story beats.

It’s also a film that is not easily unpacked. It eschews a typical Hollywood structure choosing to take no shortcuts with the audience. There’s limited exposition, realistic dialogue, and efficient usage of camera movement that helps draw the audience into the film, but it also requires them to maintain their connection and most importantly, to pay attention. The film starts slow enough as it introduces audiences to Abe and Aaron with their project, but once the discovery of the true nature of the box takes off, many viewers will quickly fall behind. Somewhere about two-thirds of the way into the film, where typical films might provide some additional structure and repetition to assist the audience with the complexities of the plot, Carruth drops large elements of the narrative. Such as the question about what’s going on with Thomas Granger. There’s no answer here, and first-time viewers may become confused around this point and never catch up. But these narrative lapses are not sloppy or cost-saving. They are purposeful choices made to elicit the complexities of the characters’ discover and the technology of time travel

Genre-fication

The biggest question that viewers have about Primer is, what really happened. The first time through the film, audiences may identify with Abe’s character. He’s the one who discovers time travel and then explains it to Aaron. Well, more accurately, shows it to Aaron. What is revealed in this first viewing is that Abe takes Aaron on as a partner on Monday, showing him how time travel works, and then takes him on his next trip on Tuesday. By Wednesday, they have developed a pattern, but some weird things happen on this day. Aaron begins bleeding from his ear after the trip from Wednesday afternoon back to that morning. Abe also hears that evening about Aaron’s heroic takedown of a man with a shotgun on Monday night. Abe has not yet developed bleeding from his ears, which means that either Aaron is more sensitive to the procedure, or he’s already been traveling more than Abe.

The reveal that breaks people’s minds comes in the final 20 minutes of the film when, on Friday, Abe realizes that something has been royally screwed up. He takes his failsafe box all the way back to early Monday morning where he becomes Abe-2 (gassing Abe-Prime and taking his place) and meets with Aaron again in the park. But this Aaron is now revealed to be listening to that day’s conversation on the earpiece of his “radio,” and playing along. Abe-2’s inability to follow the script of that morning–since this is now his second attempt in this timeframe–causes Aaron to reveal himself accidentally. But who is this Aaron? This is Aaron-3, and he’s been here before. Possibly dozens of times. He’s listening to the events as recorded by Aaron-2 and attempting to create a perfect day. It’s here that the narrator (who is Aaron-2 from sometime after the end of the film) describes that the box can be folded up and taken with the passenger inside of another box. Not everything gets laid out, but enough that careful observation of the images and dialogue presents a mostly obvious timeline.

Wait! How many Aaron’s are there? There are at least three. But some of them have time traveled numerous times–theoretically up to 20 times to the same day. The flashback explanation from the moment above shows Aaron-Prime discovering Abe’s failsafe at the storage facility. He travels in his own device, set up before Abe had his box running, and returns early in the morning on Monday, becoming Aaron-2. Aaron-2 is dressed in a dark hoodie and drugs the milk in his refrigerator. Aaron-Prime then passes out during breakfast, drugged by the milk, so Aaron-2 puts him in the attic–keeping him hostage there. Kara mentioned on Wednesday night that it sounds like there are mice in the attic. We now know it’s Aaron-Prime drugged. Aaron-2 then puts in the work for the week recording all the conversations he has. He then travels back to the second failsafe device he has (the one he carried into the box with him the first time back), becoming Aaron-3, and enters his own house just as Aaron-2 finishes drugging Aaron-Prime. He’s tired from the weeklong trip, and Aaron-2 knocks him out. At that point, Aaron-2 decides to just leave. He put in the work, and Aaron-3 will end up reaping the rewards.

When Abe talks to Aaron on Monday morning in the park–at the beginning of the film–that’s not Aaron listening to March Madness on the bench. It’s Aaron-3 having already looped back into Monday, listening to the conversations so that he can “reverse-engineer a perfect moment,” and stop a man with a gun at a party. The characters that finish up the film with their disagreement at the airport, and their parting of the ways, are Abe-2 and Aaron-3, with Abe-2 telling his former friend that he needs to leave and never come back. The narrator (Aaron-2) finishes up his tale as we see another Aaron–possibly also Aaron-2–instructing French construction workers to build a box the size of a warehouse. To the audience, it’s been a fake-out since the beginning of the film. We’ve never actually seen Aaron, except for the moments leading up to the discovery. Once Abe begins to tell Aaron about the miraculous discovery, he’s already three iterations too late.

Societal Commentary

This may sound obvious, but at its core Primer is about duplicity. But not just the face-value duplicity of having multiple versions of characters running around, though that is a main one. The characters are also similar to each other, so much so that sometimes it’s difficult to discern who you’re seeing in a dimly lit scene. Abe and Aaron both wear white oxford shirts and gray pullover sweaters. And their names are also similar, both starting with the letter ‘A’.  But the real duplicity is the kind that people use on those they call friends. An oblique reference to someone named Platts at the beginning of the film appears to indicate the four men were double-crossed by Platts in regard to some invention/deal/patent that cost them a lot of money. It’s so much on their mind that Aaron wants to punch Platts in the nose and then time travel to tell himself not to do it. Yet Aaron is the one who sidelines Abe (as well as both of them ignoring Robert and Philip). Aaron conceives of the practical application for the box sometime before Abe and keeps it from him. Even going so far as letting the whole explanation process play out, because he needs things to appear to be normal.

Primer also deals with the main characters changing their personalities due to the copious amounts of time travel. There are physical effects of the repeated use of the box, the first being bleeding ears. But later they realize that their penmanship has declined so much that it becomes nearly unreadable. Aaron says that Abe should compare the writing to his left hand as it “looks the same.” Like a mirror image of the physicality of the character. But their personalities also go through a similar metamorphosis. Aaron, who started off cautious and methodical, becomes much more of a maverick. He wants to shut off the machine just to see if Granger is inside. He nonchalantly brings his phone with them during a time jump. And he’s the first to duplicate himself multiple times over. He wants to play god. Abe, on the other hand, gets more cautious. When Granger appears to them from sometime in an unknowable future, he is concerned because things have changed. This was not an issue when he was making money on the stock market. Obviously, looping back on your day changes things. But in this case, changes are being made to him, and not by him. It’s the loss of power and a feeling of regret that sets into his life. Regret for the things he didn’t do or say, and the inability to even correct them with the use of time travel. It’s no accident that Carruth gave Abe the last name of Terger–regret spelled backward.

The Science in The Fiction

The title of the film is also no accident. The image of the title, above, appears as the last thing on screen at the end of the credits. But there are two other shots, at the beginning of the film and immediately before the credits of a strange symbol, which appears to be the word Primer, compressed into one moment. The only thing I cannot see is an ‘m’ in that image. But the word ‘primer’ also refers to numerous other things. It’s the base layer when painting. It’s an introductory text for students on a subject. It’s also the impetus for an explosion to propel a bullet. The impetus and base layers of the characters are their original versions, often referred to in sci-fi as Prime versions. They are their original primers.

Another interesting question that the film asks, and answers is how do cell phones work. The sequence on Thursday with Aaron having his cell phone in the hotel room during the day seems to be him becoming forgetful from the 36-hour days they have been running. When he again brings it later on their loop back into Thursday and it rings again (actually at the same time it rang before), it shows his recklessness. But it also is him continuing to test his boundaries. Remember, he’s now the third iteration of Aaron. He knows for a fact that things can change and he’s done it. Maybe he’s actually trying to convince Abe to think more along these lines. Or maybe he really is just getting more reckless. Either way, how do cell phones really work?

The Final Frontier

Primer was awarded multiple prizes at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival;  the Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Award. The distribution of the film was much sought after and got Carruth a lot of attention. However, that did not go to his head. He apparently consulted on the 2012 time travel film Looper, before making his second film, Upstream Color, in 2013. This was also a sci-fi film that is hard to categorize and even more experimental than Primer.

As an aficionado of time travel fiction, Primer does not enter my top films about the subject. Not because it’s not good–it’s an excellent film and theoretically precise–but it’s not as fun a film as The Time Machine or Back to the Future. Mind-blowing time travel films are interesting and worthy of note and attention. I always recommend Primer to people that haven’t seen it, because it’s a unique specimen in a subgenre that is wide and long. But the film requires so much from the audience that it can tire even the staunchest viewer. The only other film that attempts to approach time travel at this level is possibly 2014s Predestination, which requires its own investment from the audience. Primer may be the most realistic film on the subject of time travel that is not a documentary or scientific treaty on the subject. It’s evident that Carruth put much of his effort into making a film that stands up to repeat viewing and embraces the paradoxes inherent in this type of fiction.

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