Regina Cannot Explain It All
I'm Regina Small. I'm a writer and editor in NYC. I have a lot of opinions.
Interests include: sci-fi/fantasy, literature, summertime daydrinking, trying to be a better person, fancy manicures, philosophy, pictures for sad children, and the role of irony in the modern world. And fandom, of course.
I have another blog dedicated exclusively to science fiction/fantasy. Read it here.
Above is the poster for Primer (2004).
There are things I could say about this film. It’s about time travel. It has a non-linear plot structure. It was written by a scientist who also produced, directed and starred in this film with a budget of $7,000. It won a prize at Sundance and, as you can read above, high praise from Esquire. By those standards, it’s an impressive accomplishment.
But it’s not good. It’s almost impossible to follow, its labyrinthine plot twists don’t arise organically from the story and when the credits rolled, I felt confused and, what’s worse, didn’t care about resolving that confusion. Tom confessed to having watched it once and then watched it four more times to try and figure it out. But from the first moment, when the characters are talking over one another, so much so that following one conversation goes beyond challenging to annoying, I disengaged — from the characters, their choices, the “message.” I said to Tom, “this is a movie written by someone who is not a writer by trade and so it’s not very writerly.”
I’m sure Shane Carruth, the auteur in question, understood exactly how all of his “puzzle pieces” fit together, but I didn’t feel compelled by any of the story elements to put it together. The next morning, Tom read me a timeline that rabid fans of the film constructed and I shrugged, said “Okay, I understand that. I still don’t care. It still doesn’t make sense. I still don’t think X’s motivation washes or understand why he’d choose to do that instead of something else.”
(Not to mention there’s one particular tantalizing plot detail — a future event that the main characters somehow screw up — that never needs resolution because, woopsie, an alternate timeline, one where this future event conveniently never happens, was created in the interim.)
And Carruth wants this film to be about greed and how it can eat away at people and their relationships, especially friendship, but it’s too cold, too sterile to ever feel like anything but a mildly intriguing but ultimately frustrating brainteaser.
