Primer

[movies]

A couple of days ago, I saw this movie called Primer.

The official web site avoids mentioning it, but I really don't think it's too much of a spoiler if I say that the two main characters discover that their latest experiment is a time machine.

Time travel stories are often poorly done. Star Trek, in my opinion, consistently makes a mess of them. But Primer is a good time travel story. I think there's a certain level of technical savvy, and the story is not a contrived problem of how to "repair the timeline" or some such thing, nor does it provide neat and tidy explanations of temporal mechanics. No, this film is about the effect that the discovery, and its subsequent use, has on the characters and their relationship. It's acted and shot in documentary style, so it feels almost hyper-realistic, and that really heightened the queasiness I felt as the characters started toying with causality.

For me, the last act of the film quickly descended into incomprehensibility. It's obvious, in broad strokes, how the two friends' relationship is affected by the whole episode, but I must admit to being a little frustrated that I couldn't grasp any of the details.

A friend had advised me to "pay close attention," but it might have been just as well, in the end, if I had just let the details slide and gone with the flow.