Primer (Review?)

I have a feeling this is a movie that no matter how many times I see it I still won't have a complete grasp on it. I wonder whether the writers/director/actor, Shane Carruth, has all the details truly figured out, does he know what happens to all the doubles, that he does not show in the movie. There are many things that left me pondering what happened and what they meant. This is definitely a movie that is meant to be discussed, pondered and maybe even come to our own conclusions?

So as far as understanding the film, I would say that on a scale of 1 to 10, a 5. So if my conclusions and ideas are off, you will know why. I found this movie especially confusing because of the dialog, the way the two main characters talked to each other made it hard to follow most of the time. I found myself missing parts of what they said, like it went in one ear and out the other. I am almost positive this is not my fault because I was really trying to pay attention and I'm a big movie buff and I have never had that much trouble following the dialog. This caused there to have many holes in the story line for me. I was left with many questions, like what was there original invention suppose to be for? And what happened to the other two guys? The flow of the movie was static and hard to follow at times, I know this is to be expected in independent films, but this flow was as confusing as the time traveling that the characters were taking. Speaking of the time traveling, I somewhat understood how they did it, warm up machine, go back, spend time in a box and then you are back in the u-haul, back in time. How far back in time depends on how long you are in the aluminum box. I just didn't understand what happens to the doubles that they created, do they eventually disappear or are they around forever. In the end of the movie I only thought there were two left of the original characters, but if one double still existed then the rest must too, but what happened to them? Did I miss something?

So what happened to the other doubles? Did they disappear or do they forever alter the world around them? Well hypothetically I believe that they most of them came to the same conclusion, either stick around or get the hell out of there. I figure if a double of Aaron (or is it the original Aaron?) could leave his wife and kid easily, then well who knows what happened to the rest of his doubles. And his friend, well…stocking the originals or the doubles, making sure they don’t step out of line and do exactly what he did. I guess lessons learned by one double is a lesson learned for all.

Then there’s the thing about the ear bleeding, was that ever cleared up? So their ears started bleeding, Aaron after once in the box and Abe after a couple times. This means the damage (I’m assuming this is damage) is passed on to each double. So what does this mean for the doubles, are they going to be altered in some way? Personalities, mental capacity, life span…Is it possible that the effects on the doubles will also occur on the original? Is there even an original anymore? Oh wow, I just realized that all I have are questions about this movie, no real conclusion about what I saw. So what does this mean about how I feel about this movie?

“Prime” was the type of movie that draws you in by your complete confusion. You don’t know what is going on in the beginning so you keep watching, you don’t know what is going on in the middle of the movie, but you feel like you are getting closer to figuring it out so you continue watching, then in the end you still have no idea what is going on. Well this then makes you want to watch the movie again in the hopes that you will eventually figure it out. It’s a relatively entertaining movie, I probably won’t see it again, I just want someone to tell me the things I don’t understand. For a $7,000 dollar movie it is really good and I didn’t really notice the lack of technology in a science fiction movie, the aluminum boxes were believable. I give it a 7 out of 10. I just wish I would have understood it a little better.