Primer

A very personal look into science Overview: Friends Abe and Aaron are engineers who work together creating various projects. One day their invention has the unintentional side effect of time-travel, where upon discovery both men use it to their own advantage. However as the experiment continues, tensions run higher as the weight of their actions come crashing down on them. I wasn’t too sure what to make of the movie when it began. Just four guys sitting at a table, talking about their life in a way that seems obvious to them but foreign to me. I understood the words, and a vague sense of what the general idea was, but it was a bit hard to truly get the message. At least for a while.

It doesn’t really ease you into whatever the hell Aaron and Abe are doing, or why they are doing it. The movie just throws you in there head first and let you figure it out from there. But I guess it just adds to the effect of when the Actually got to their accidental discovery of Time Travel. Because by that point, you got use to their jargon to really know what they are saying, and that this is serious.

I love everything about the Time Travel in this movie. First, how it actually worked. The machine turns on, you do your thing, enter into the box later to come out exactly when the machine was on. Sort of a small scale Looper with how time seems to encircle itself. Second, I love how the time travel thing was an accidental discovery. They weren’t even intending to make it! It was some….thing with magnets that they somehow got Time Travel from it. And the first thing they do it to figure out who would want to use it. It is very scientific, practical, and entrepreneur like that. They want to see how it can work, how it can be applied, and who would want to buy something like this. And that is what leads to their eventual downfall.

The movie is shot constantly with up-close camera shots, right to the face and basically always on our two leads. It took me a while to figure out what feeling I had since the beginning because of these shots, and it was towards the end that I realized how raw and personal it felt. It was so claustrophobic. Everything surrounding the time travel felt claustrophobic from the machine being basically a coffin, to where it was being stored. And it just, feeds into this feeling of tragedy that surrounds them, like in a Shakesphere Style. How they tried to succeed and just, couldn’t. We had such a close up onto their lives and friendship that we couldn’t really see the bigger picture until it was too late to change anything, just like them. Overall: I think it is a great movie. It is a bit on the shorter side, but very personal that just sucks you in. The time travel is creative not only in the scientific way they actually plan and use the machine, but how the machine works in general. Best part, you can get it for free on youtube. If you like science fiction and morality issues, this is the movie for you.