I think, in general, I struggle with time travel movies. All too often, it feels as though they are confusing for the sake of being confusing. A complex timeline not for the sake of thematic complexity, but rather that people will tell their friends about how confusing the movie is. Understanding and dissecting the film become a pseudo-scientific endeavor, rather than an artistic one. An artificial rigor. “Complexity” for the sake of confusion, as opposed to confusion stemming from complexity. Primer is, pun not intended, a prime example of this.
As a symptom of this, it is hard to give any sort of plot summary for the film. In brief, two guys stumble across a way to time travel and subsequently use it time and time again.
Personally, the film does not motivate me to make efforts to untangle the plot and chronology, nor do I have any desire to go out and read anything on the internet that theorizes the timeline of the film. I am not saying Primer is a “bad film,” whatever that means. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to untangle the film in this fashion, but this is not what I go to films for.
The film sets its tone and interest in its own inscrutability from the start. The dialogue in the opening scene is all reference to people, things, and events we do not know. The language and conversation is difficult to track. Comprehension is made even more difficult by how the audio is layered in the conversation; the characters are constantly talking over each other. All of this, I think, in some sense, is a strength of the film. The film is sure of the effect it wants to go for, and it uses everything at its disposable to accomplish this task effectively. While the quality of the dialogue might be subpar, the overall effect of the dialogue lands.
The team behind the film are also deserving of admiration purely for what they were able to accomplish on such a small budget. Although some aspects of quality, most notably some the performance, give away that the film was made on and independent budget, it is still surprising to learn just how small that budget actually was. Many films that are far less ambitious and achieve far less have had bigger budgets. So that alone makes Primer worth some level of respect.
If you are looking for a film to treat like a puzzle or to build theories about, Primer is certainly for you. But if you are looking for an artistic experience with emotional or thematic depth, I’d recommend you look elsewhere.
