PrimerMovie.com

[makingthefilm.com]

Guys,

James Berardinini is normally very good (I think he only ever screwed up on Mulholland Drive). But check out this review of PRIMER:

http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/p/primer.html

It almost seems *bitter* - quite shocking! I haven't seen the film yet as I'm in the UK, but hopefully when I do see it, this review will be proved incorrect.

-Mike

[drscienceboy]

I received a free ticket via my IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) membership as a promotion for a film featuring real engineers in a real and positive way. So I attended a showing in Wash DC on Oct. 10th. I read this website before hand and was quite excited to attend. Maybe, finally, something. I knew it was low budget independent (by an engineer) going in, that made it even more interesting.

The film began as I had read, the (HP) garage, the IBM ties and shirts, the somber interaction. It was quite a conversational film, but most independents are since talk is cheaper than sets. Then the group divided into two apparent camps. Engineers often disagree with technical directions. The film was doing a nice job of capturing these subtle interactions. We don't hear from the one group again but the two main characters continue on with their research. When the batteries are kicked from the device and it still runs, was this an energy producing machine. As the sound whirred down my excitement was cooled. Every engineer wants to figure out what they have invented. Then came the protein growth. That would make sense. They were trying to adjust the effects of gravity. General relativity would tell you that time would either run faster or slower. This was getting quite good. Next they had to find venture captial, always a pain. They also hid results from the rest of the group. Again, the film was scorring a 10 for realism and scientific plausibility. Finally they went to the storage units to see someone going in. My first thought was that it was the dissenting members of the team, who had set up their own experiment and were now competing with our main characters. Again, this was really hitting the spot.

And then, when the binoculars show that it is a duplicate, it all falls apart for me. Time travel, why did it have to go there. I wanted to see how the real issues of patents and invention rights get fought and how the engineers usually end up with nothing. But no, instead the film becomes a standard paradoxical twist of time travel. I couldn't help but be reminded of Bill and Ted. Whatever happended to conservation of mass and energy on a local level. Although I respect the job the writer did in tracking the action (he seems to have a mind for time travel if it were possible) still I couldn't escape the disappointment. Like many of you on the board I started to try to track the time jumps but I reminded myself that paradoxes have that effect if you let them. That's why they are called paradoxes.

Although I think the James Berardinini review is unnecessarily harsh and completely decoupled from the high quality film that Primer is for the budget, in the end, the time travel story is what left me with little need to remember this film.

[cineman9]

Good film criticism is like a good essay. It tackles a subject, examines it, and makes conclusions supported by argument. In my mind, good film criticism has little to do with whether I personally agree with the writer's final verdict. It's about the quality of the argument.

Usually, James Berardinelli is a reliable critic. But in his Primer review he loses his focus. He's so preoccupied with detracting the film's acclaim that he ends up saying very little about the film itself.

Berardinelli writes, "The reason why Primer's defenders like the film is because they don't understand it." Uhhh. OK. Well, that's not why I like the film and it's pretty bold to assume that everyone who likes the film does so for one simple reason.

But why does this even matter? What difference does it make that it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance? Would the film be "better" if it had not won? These arguments that have nothing to do with what's on the screen.

There are strong arguments, positive and negative, that can be made about Primer. Berardinelli's review lacks strong arguments.

[Mackey]

I first went to see Primer at Grapevine Mills 30, I was looking for a film to watch and noticed that they had several indies, which they usually do, and I had seen all the studio films that I was interested in seeing, and Primer's start time was good for me, so I went.

It sure as hell wasnt the blurb on fandango that sold it to me.. ' scientists invent machine that allows them to get anything they want, they have to learn how to deal with it.' LOL so cliched. I actually went inspite of that blurb.

I didnt come to this forum until almost 5 days after I had seen the movie. It stuck in my head. I am a veteran of sci-fi dealing with time travel and the paradoxes it produces when you do it multiple times in close proximity with your upstream or downstream persona. Heinlein has a couple of stories dealing with it which are fascinating. Chaulker has a novel dealing with it that I very much enjoyed. I found this movie to be enjoyable in that same sense. Like Shane, the very list of paradox convinces one that time travel isnt possible, but he teases you to it, first by implying that his machine has the capability of perpetual motion ( another scientific impossiblity, except perhaps at the quantum scale).

So the suspense and the build up is keen for technologists, the catharsis is when Aaron watches Abe2 enter the storage facility with binoculars handed to him by Abe1. This happens fairly early in the film, but the way the film is paced and presented, you always feel you are trying to catch up. Some find this unacceptable, I find it preferable. It is the difference in a sexily costumed couple having sex, and camera angles and cuts teasing you into lusting after a moderately attractive woman, vs a pornographic display of two nude bodies sweatily slamming each other to a chorus of grunts and moans.

Certainly some aspects of the story were affected by the film, but this is almost always the case. It is certainly the case with big budget films in which idiotic things are injected into the story 'just because they can'.

I cant speak for anyone else, but this film stuck with me, I was thinking about it for days afterwards and went to see it again after browsing this forum and seeing all the questions flying around here, and now, several days after the second veiwing, after having decided that I had resolved enough items to feel I had a firm grasp of the story and wouldnt want to see it again. Now I am getting the jones to see it again.

I dont think the movie is "the greatest movie ever", but I did enjoy it, and that has been an increasingly rare thing for this avid movie consumer of 20 years.

[AnnieOklie]

The Primer poster has the Esquire magazine quote "The headiest, most singular science fiction movie since Kubrick made 2001". That comparison made, I was just curious to look for reviews of 2001 when it came out in 1968. I found this article.

Here's some interesting snippets:

[greg_barton]

"The reason why Primer's defenders like the film is because they don't understand it."

Well, that's one reason why I liked it so much. A film actually challenged me! What a concept! It didn't talk down to me. I'm still thinking about it, trying to wrap my brain around it, a week after seeing it twice. I haven't been this occupied by a movie in years, maybe decades. What the heck is wrong with that, eh?