Primer: A New Way to Time Travel

Primer was made on a very low budget (around $7,000), filmed in 2001 and completed in 2004. Writer/director/editor Shane Carruth was certainly the auteur of this project, and it reinforces my beliefs about how auteur cinema is generally stronger than movies that are made with a million different hands in the pot. In general, what he was able to achieve with this movie is inspiring and incredible.

This is not a movie you only watch once, and Carruth himself made the film with the idea that viewers who cared would go back and watch it over and over. He was right, I've watched it at least 3 times already.

David Sullivan, the actor who plays Abe, does an incredible job as well. His acting still managed to stand out despite the fact that the film is worried about so many other things than just the characters, although it's clear from director Carruth's commentary track that he was just as interested in making a film about human conflict and trust as he was about making one about time travel.

The characters start to get more erratic and everything starts making less sense as the film goes on. Mostly during the first watch. However, after watching a few videos to clarify what's really going on, everything instead makes complete sense and it's shocking how quickly a film that seemed completely bonkers during the first watch is suddenly completely comprehensible the second time around.

The rules of time travel in this movie are perhaps one of its greatest strengths, as the rules of the time travel are unique to this movie as far as I can tell. The way it all seems like it could actually work in real life is what makes these rules so compelling. I found myself wanting to write a movie with these same time travel rules.

Here's a link to the video that helped me out the most: