The Wonderful World of Primer

Prior to class last wednesday, I had heard about Primer and its intense, to say the least, narrative structure. My roommate, a film major, had suggested I watch it for the last few months. After watching it in class, though I was thoroughly interested and impressed of their low-budget skills, I was still quite confused with regard to the plot. I went home and watched it again on Friday, and it only took me a few minutes to finally realize what was going on. The first thing I noticed was about 10 minutes in, when they first use the box inside the garage and Abe wakes up in his room very confused. It is very interesting to note the glitch in the scene while he is trying to figure everything out. I think this is a tell-tale sign that they had begun the "endless permutations" as expressed by the narrator.

The structure of the movie is quite wonderful. Constantly keeping the audience guessing as to what is actually going on, and when it's going on. Carruth does an amazing job of distorting the traditional sequencing of events in a movie. Typically, as we discussed in class, the plot moves forward with time, occasionally leaving spaces for flashbacks and things of that nature. From the first scene in Primer, it is obvious (after watching it a few times) that there is no chronological continuity with the narrative. It is almost as if they filmed the movie, cut up the scenes onto little pieces of paper and chose the order out of a hat. Obviously thats a bit of an exaggeration but it still lends itself to the amount of discontinuity. I think it is also incredibly important to note, towards the end of the film, while Aaron and Abe are in the hotel Aaron mentions to Abe that he's hungry and hasn't "eaten since later this afternoon". This tells the audience that they are aware of the infinite permutations that are occurring. Also the introduction of Aaron's cellphone into the hotel lets the audience know that these "permutations" or clones are beginning to think for themselves, ultimately resulting in Aaron leaving to build a large scale "box" in France while his clone handles his family at home.

The structure of the narrative is one that involves close focus and interpretation. I see this as one of Carruth's greatest assets, his ability to only use 77 minutes of film, while still requiring the audience to pay attention to every single detail that is going on. Without an extreme attention to detail, this story would not make sense, and would probably soar over the audiences head, so to speak. Below I added a picture from Reddit, which jokingly describes the plot progression of the film.