Am I missing something?

[kickaha]

Just watched Primer, after months of having folks tell me it was an amazing mind-fuck, and avoiding all spoilers.

So, um, where was the mind-fuck? Seemed like a pretty straight-forward time travel story with multiple causality loops. Well done definitely, but I kept waiting for the big wowzer moment, and then the credits rolled. Ernh?

Seriously, did I miss something?

Edit: Yes, I loved it. :) Just wondering, seriously, if the DVD skipped a chapter or something. Not because it didn't make sense, but because it *did*. My one naggling question was Rachel's Dad. That seemed ambiguous.

(Watch it, if you haven't.)

Comments

[eridan.livejournal.com]

Yup.

Either that or you just didn't have as much fun with it as I did.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of it, it was one of the most clever and multi-level stories of the genre I've ever seen... I just kept waiting for the 'big moment'.

Maybe my physics background screwed me over this time. :) I was thinking of a long-span backup unit as soon as they showed the first unit in the storage. It just seemed... logical. :D Maybe that was the problem - they acted logically, so most of the steps seemed obvious to another engineer. *shrug* When Aaron got out with a bloody ear, I suspected this wasn't really his first trip through. As soon as Abe heard the story about the shotgun at the party, it kind of confirmed a looped story. I love how everything fitted into place in the end though. (Made the 'critters in the attic' rather gruesome. :) ) Beautifully done. Ranks up there with Memento for making the audience fire some neurons, IMO. :)

[badger.livejournal.com]

If it didn't work for you, it didn't work for you. I thought it was a decently handled time travel story that probably impressed people who hadn't dealt with this kind of topic before. The most notable fact of the film is that it exists at all: the director made the film for $7000 total. It's encouraging to the amateur film maker.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it worked for me just fine. In fact, I really liked it a lot.

I had the same reaction to the Sixth Sense, too... because I was told there was a big twist, I was trying to anticipate it, and did about halfway through. *shrug*

Didn't know that about the budget, I'm really impressed.

[badger.livejournal.com]

Well, remember, you're not the typical audience when it comes to physics issues. So for many people, this film was a mindwrenching opening of possibility.

As for Sixth Sense, someone slipped with the big secret before I saw it. So I ahd my second time through the first time, looking for the hints the director put all the way through :).

Budget: It is impressive, and encouraging. After all, $7k is the cost of a used car. Most of us could manage $7k if we really wanted to. This film is a great "get off your ass and do something" in the spirit of the "DIY or Die" fellow - I have the DVD of his interviews with indie artists and musicians, it's great.

Robert Rodriguez did _Mariachi Man_ for the same amount actually, about a decade earlier. Of course, he was doing it in Mexico, but most of the $7k went to devleop the film. I believe _Primer_ was shot on digital video, though.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

I *loved* the look of it. Between the washed out lighting and the shirts and ties, it really felt like a mid-70s educational film. :D

[dollraves.livejournal.com]

Nah... I watched. And though I thought it was amazing and even twisty, I didn't consider it even remotely a mindfuck. Like you, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I didn't see why everyone was raving. *shrug*

As my friend Byron put it after watching it, "That Emperor there ain't got no clothes..."

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

My biggest disappointment was their chance to play with a causal loop Schroedinger's Cat scenario, when they're talking about possibly telling someone else, and looking at the two boxes, and saying "He could be in one of these right now..." It was the one point in the movie where they had the setup all in place to start an interesting diversion, and they bagged it. Ah well, the rest made up for it.

[icebluenothing.livejournal.com]

It's not really much of a mindfuck; most of what happens is pretty straight-forward, although poorly-explained in an "oh-look-aren't-we-clever-by-not-telling-you-jack" kind of way, I thought.

But yeah, Rachel's dad is ambiguous, and is meant to be. The characters don't know where the hell he came from, so neither do we.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

My speculation when he popped up was that the party had gone badly, and Rachel had been killed. They had told him about the Box ("So you would [tell someone else] if it were an emergency?") that they could go back and fix it, and he'd gotten stuck in one of the loops. Now that I think about it, the 'someone else' was in fact Rachel's Dad during that conversation. Since Aaron at that point was already looping through several times, I suspect he was almost-confessing to Abe, or thinking about telling the dad on another trip through to garner his support, and the scene in the car was him playing ignorant yet again.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

And now that I think about it, Rachel's dad had '2-3 days beard growth' when they saw him in the car... and the timer on the back-up box said 3 days and change at one point.