MovieChat Forums > Primer (2005) Discussion > Primer is not complicated, it's obfuscat...

Primer is not complicated, it's obfuscated. (and good)

posted 10 years ago by Tim851
29 replies | jump to latest

It's virtually impossible to understand Primer the first time around.

That doesn't mean that people who complain about this are stupid and only like Michael Bay movies.

The basic plot is easy enough to grasp for a sci-fi fan. It's not even that complicated, really. But much of the detail is never shown, but only talked about in short, interspersed pieces of mono- or dialog, oftentimes in suboptimal audio quality. And the jump cuts don't help either.

There's a valid complaint about a director intentionally obfuscating his movie. If you're bent on it, you could edit "Sleepless in Seattle" in a manner that nobody gets it. Wouldn't elevate that movie.

I think - and you may disagree with me on that - it is the job of a storyteller to make sure any reasonably intelligent and focused audience will understand his story. There may be greater implications to a story, the stuff you talk to your buddies about at 2 am in a fast food restaurant after seeing the movie.

But the movie itself should be self-explanoratory. I studied film (though I ended up in a different profession) and more than one lecturer told us something along the lines of "If you have to explain your movie to a smart person, you've failed."

That doesn't make Primer a bad movie. Not at all. But would I think any less of it if I actually understood who that Granger guy was, why he followed them before they followed him, and how the hell he time-travelled......? No.

I had to write this, because reading through this forum, I discovered a few incidents where people who complaint about (parts of) the movie were dissed as dumb sheep seeking popcorn flicks, while the dissers pretended they were some movie elite.

[–] kinsayder 10 years ago

"Not complicated but obfuscated" is a good description. To me, it was like the cinematic equivalent of a detective story with all the vowels left out.

I don't agree that a filmmaker has to make his movies self-explanatory - though it's probably a good idea if you want to succeed in the mainstream. We don't insist that novelists explain themselves, and we certainly don't require it of poets. There have been cinematic poets like Tarkovsky whose work is hard to understand because they're dealing with ideas that can't be expressed in a simple way. That's not the case with Primer, and Carruth is no poet. He could have told his story in a straightforward way and nothing would have been lost other than the superficial puzzle element, which appears to have been the point of the whole exercise.

[–] the-author 10 years ago

It strives to be different and smart at the same time. It is deliberate in not explaining all of the details. However, he shows what you need and Aaron's concluding exposition sets most of the story straight. You just were lost most of the film. Mission accomplished.

The good thing is that explanations are on the web if people need to have the answers. Thus, Primer is more alive than dead history like so many other films.
It's up there with Mulholland Drive and a few other deep (confusing) films. There are films without reasonable answers, but Primer is not one of them. Although, Shane admits it is more confusing than he expected.

Best unknown feature at IMDB.com
http://www.imdb.com/features/video/browse/

[–] Ratchapakinai 10 years ago

This film should be called "Film for the pretentious."

[–] Raxivace 10 years ago

What did you find pretentious about Primer?

“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.” - Raymond Chandler

[–] BlackLodgeNightmare 9 years ago

While watching the movie, i opened this http://francisshanahan.com/index.php/2005/primer-movie-scene-by-scene- explanation/
and this http://qntm.org/primer http://qntm.org/coffin

I would have been lost without reading that.

[–] Zeego 9 years ago

If you're bent on it, you could edit "Sleepless in Seattle" in a manner that nobody gets it.

That actually sounds like it would be a really fun editing project.

[–] adamk-2 9 years ago

Thank you for a wonderfully intelligent and measured post - I saw this for the first time last night and was completely baffled by it and felt incredibly stupid. Although I had an inkling it was about time travel and causality, I don't think there was a single point in the film where I had the faintest clue what was actually going on, or who was who, or what they were talking about. It's a grown up sci-fi film and approaches the subject in a grown-up way, but unfortunately this means with no concessions to the viewer. So, yes, the characters talk to each other as these characters would, in personal shorthand and an implicit understanding as to what they're talking about. It's hyper-realistic, but it makes for an incredibly frustrating (and sometimes quite dull) film. It made me feel as if I was a hanger-on at a conversation I wasn't remotely part of.

I'm willing to bet that, yes, I'd get more from it the second time around, but I'm not sure if I liked it that much, or if I have the energy.

[–] GrandWushu 9 years ago

I only watched it once and I was about 3/4 of the way into this film before I even came to the conclusion that this had something to do with time travel. I definitely am going to have to watch this a second, possibly third and forth time in order to understand the story.

But what I am getting from the film is that this is a really cerebral movie, compared to most of the big flashy hollywood films which invite you to sit back and veg while they tell the story. The film forces you, not only to pay close attention, but to figure it out and, in a way, interact with it. I think people should be making more films like this one.

[–] brautigan-126-784250 9 years ago

David Lynch says hello.

[–] Ringworm7 9 years ago

The science felt to me like a red herring right when Abe talks to Aaron on the bench the first time, so I focused on the two characters and it felt like a story about people and trust, and greed - though not just greed for money. It's a great story. I need to watch it a few more times to follow the science, and the timelines are still like spaghetti to me.

[–] psilocybin1000 9 years ago

I enjoyed the film.. I don't know jack about the physics, science, or engineering they were talking about though. So a huge part of the film was lost on me. I could try to watch it again just to see if I can get a better hold on it I guess, but listening to people talk about *beep* I completely don't understand kind of makes me tune out.

[–] beierfilms 8 years ago

I think the film was interesting but I also found it needlessly vague at times.

I don't mind when a filmmaker leaves something up to the imagination but, perhaps because of some of the limitations in the film-making, I think there's a problem when we're struggling to even understand WHAT questions the filmmaker is asking. Things like the overlapping dialogue and other issues with basic communication often hinder us from going on the journey I think the filmmaker wanted.

I don't mind that I never quite new why Granger came back in time or what timeline he was from. I do however mind that, when this already confusing scenario was introduced, I couldn't really remember who he was or if I had seen him before in the film. It's fine to make your audience question how time travel might work and the events that are unfolding but they need to have a firm grasp of the world they are in BEFORE you start messing with them or else they're more concerned with the basics of the story than the more complex philosophical implications.

As I said before, I think that some of this just comes down to budget and film-making skill. I wish we had seen Rachel being threatened by a gun instead of just hearing about it. I wish we had seen Granger and gotten used to him in the world of this film before he became a time-traveling paradox. I wish that I could have heard a lot of what the characters were saying when they were talking over each other. Some of these things are probably due to budget challenges (didn't have the money to film more scenes with a large group of characters), but some of these things are also due to pure emphasis. It felt like the character spent more time talking about a guy threatening Rachel with a gun than they did about the fact that THEY'D JUST DISCOVERED TIME TRAVEL.

I just didn't feel nearly as grounded in the basic world of this film as I should have which made it hard to become invested (or even follow) the time travel aspects. It's a shame because a lot of things were very interesting. Moments like the phone call and the characters drugging their past selves where very cool but I often felt I wasn't appreciating them as much as I could have because other aspects of the movie were so unclear.