August 29, 2005

Primer

I watched Primer today. It is amazingly complex, full of depth and character, and captivating. While I think it is an excellent movie, it is so complex that I didn't really understand it watching the first time, and I'm still not sure I do even though I watched it right again a second time with the Director's Commentary turned on. You have to pay extremely close attention to who is involved, what is happening, little details, and also try to keep the timeline in your head.

Keeping the timeline in your head is the difficult part. Some might compare the theory to Memento, but while Memento was a sequential backwards unraveling, and the plot driven by the murder mystery, Primer does not move sequentially. Instead, it loops back and forth several times, with differing time lengths for the loops. And the plot is driven instead by how this affects the two best friends who are the central characters of the story.

I was impressed by the amount detail that went into the film, and the research into the technical background that was discussed. There are no loose ends, and I'm sure the creator had been obsessing over getting things perfect for a long time before shooting even began. Since this seems to have been his first film. In fact, a whole lot of the film was driven on sheer vision and passion.

Posted by josuah at August 29, 2005 5:46 AM UTC+00:00

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