Movie of the Day: "Primer"
From imdb:
At night and on weekends, four men in a suburban garage have built a cottage industry of error-checking devices. But, they know that there is something more. There is some idea, some mechanism, some accidental side effect that is standing between them and a pure leap of innovation. And so, through trial and error they are building the device that is missing most. However, two of these men find the device and immediately realize that it is too valuable to market. The limit of their trust in each other is strained when they are faced with the question, If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything? Written by Sujit R. Varma
When El Mariachi originally came out no one believed that anyone could make a film for seven thousand dollars. It seemed insane. Then a couple of years later, The Blair Witch Project comes out and doest the kind of box office business that Hollywood Films like Death to Smoochy wish they could have had. That witch changed EVERYthing.
There was a flood of movie made on no budgets at all and plenty of them got some attention. The problem was that a lot of them weren’t any good.
The problem with the “independent” film world is, that people max out their credit cards by trying to make films that look just as good as Hollywood movies, or have characters that have sellable character arcs. And redeemable social messages. Because when you make a movie in you’re early twenties you hope and pray that not only that someone will see, love and subsequently buy and distribute your movie. But that the people that do buy your movie at least have a reserved parking space at one of the major studios.
So, to make a movie for seven thousand dollars, about a couple of engineers who build a time machine and become involved in a complex narrative cinematic riddle with no notable visual effects or recognizable actors) or for that matter actor’s with any previous experience), is just plain nutty.
This movie is as smart and as clever as anything that has come out of Hollywood for a long time. And it was made by an engineer who had no previous film experience. Who was literally self taught and who not only delivered a brilliant narrative film, but also one that had a complete visual look and deceptively simple characters.
Primer is really a step into a direction of filmmaking that I think we should all embrace because aside from the production wonders. It is filled with amazing stuff. Usually when you watch sci-fi films there tends to be a lot of dumbing down of technical jargon. Primer embraces it. Because it doesn’t really matter what the exact terms mean, because we are shown those theories and put into practice. When we watch two mechanics work over a car and discuss the job to be done, it’s not so much what they’re saying but what they’re doing. We tend to listen with half an ear.
Primer also deals with it’s audience in away that’s very different. When we first saw Remember The Matrix? That movie's ideas was hammered into our reads with scene after scene of exposition Because it’s really important for EVERYONE in the audience to stay with the movie in order for it to pay off at the end. It’s gotta be one of the first rules of screenwriting, don’t’ alienate you audience. But Primer doesn’t really seem to give a shit whether you’re with it or not. It’s on a path and it will not deviate from that path to explain theories of causality. For viewers that are unprepared that can be a very jarring experience. But it also results in a movie that is lean and free of the narrative fat that clogs up the pace of a lot of movies.
I think that Primer while not a date move definitely requires you to watch it with someone else if for no other reason than to see how they interpret the events in the movie.
I’ve shown the movie to a few people and their observations of the event seem to differ greatly.
By the end you’ll wonder if the Doc Brown really needed a DeLorean with a Flex Capacitor after all.
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Primer on imdb
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