Director: Shane Carruth Year: 2004 Country: American/Jabberwock
First Exploration
Movie [PRIMER]'s translation as "Destiny's Gate" may be unsatisfactory, while "Detonator" is irrelevant. In addition to the detonator, the word "PRIMER" also has the original meaning. This word will definitely not appear for the first time in a movie that travels through time and space. The agent who embarks on the journey for the first time in [Deja Vu], the guy who reads the diary for the first time in [Butterfly Effect], [Back to the Future ] The teenagers who got on the doctor’s broken car for the first time in this category can be included in this category. Science fiction films are fond of playing with the concept of "time", and "PRIMER" as the "initial" distinguishes the order of time. The meaning of "successfully" in this film is especially important.
The story of this film is actually very simple: Four engineers use their spare time to tinker with new inventions in the garage. Among them, Abe and Aaron inadvertently invented a kind of box during their research, which can make the objects in the box return to the time point of turning on by turning on and off. Abe was the first to see the value of the box, made a transport box for people to use, and made a spare box just in case. After he told Aaron of this discovery, the two began to consider the possibility of using this method to travel back and make a fortune by buying and selling stocks. It's just that as things progressed, everything gradually began to get out of control. Not only can they not predict the other person's thoughts, but they can't even figure out the thoughts of the self that has traveled back. Abe was gradually shocked by the uncontrollable situation, and used the spare box to try to "make things right." On the other hand, Aaron has a deep heart. He traveled back several times and wanted to influence the development of the event. He deceived Abe and even fought himself with himself, trying to hold the development of the matter in his hands and become a hero who saves everyone. This vicious circle continues. The two are controlled by selfishness and desire, quarreling, calculating each other, and the future becomes unpredictable in the wits between themselves and each other. This unpredictable future is not new in [Butterfly Effect]. It is worth mentioning that the variable that influences the development of things in this work is "human nature".
PRIMER represents the beginning, and it also represents a kind of human panic: In the movie, the protagonists cannot know whether they are experiencing a future controlled by the traversing self. The uncontrollability of the human heart seems to be magnified by the time machine. , They can't even guess their own thoughts in the future.
Because of the director’s storytelling and editing, almost no one can understand this movie for the first time and understand who the entangled traverser is the first and who is the latecomer, and it provides such infinite possibilities. The word "initially" is not the answer to the question, but the source and beginning of all questions.
Thinking of horror, director
Shane Carruth, a half-time director, was a graduate of mathematics. After working for three engineering companies, he was engaged in writing. After writing a lot of novel fragments, he finally found his interest---- -movie.
Shane Carruth classifies the film as an intellectual thriller. Because the endless technical terms and scientific argumentation methods in this film are exactly in line with the word "thinking", the subsequent human vortex and the repeated unexpected plots are in line with the connotation of horror.
When it comes to scientific methods, the film is really thoughtful. In order to get the precious metal palladium, the protagonist in the film removes the three-way catalytic converter of the car's exhaust pipe. When handling liquid freon, colleagues are required to wear a mask (freon has low toxicity). Judge the storage time of the object by the thickness of the protein formed by Aspergillus. Some netizens even used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Feynman diagrams to explain the scientific mechanism of the "box" in order to explain the theory of time in this film. The director went to an extreme. In order to show the real working status of the "garage R&D team", he even went to the physicist's working group to collect style. Therefore, in the first quarter of the film, the engineers’ daily life, trivial speeches, manufacturing, manipulation, and arguing process caused most of the audience who didn’t understand this to fall into the “hell of science and technology” with repeated nouns. Sleepy.
After that, it was a maze plot that took a sharp turn. The director completely hid the two timelines and intercepted the story into an ambiguous paragraph that moved along the timeline. The rough editing techniques, the lack of dramatic plot development and even the slightly plain dialogue plot make the audience's sense of substitution not strong. The feeling of suspense and depression was not successfully conveyed to the audience. But just such editing and design, just such clues of collage, has made Sundance an eye-opening reasoning mystery. So, how did he conceive it?
Shane Carruth mentioned that most of the plot design of [Destiny's Gate] was inspired by [Presidential Team], and this movie about the Watergate incident may not be unfamiliar to everyone. He believes that the most admirable thing about this movie is that the seemingly unrelated events are in their own hands in the movie, but in the end they magically weave into a web of relationships and conspiracies. For a director who has been working as an engineer for many years but has only studied film for one or two years, we cannot ask for more. The author believes that the puzzle created in this film is not so much the author deliberately doing it, it is better to say that it is a wonderful sentence. Compared with [Presidential Team], this film neither has a complicated and heavy social network, nor does it have clear and consistent clues. Under the influence of the axis of time, the audience has no way to sort out the plot and context step by step, but can only be ignorant of repeated viewing, and even pull out a piece of paper to write down the plot and details one by one, and draw an intertwined one. To solve this puzzle.
This is an amazing coincidence. It is neither the flashbacks in [Memory Fragment] nor the psychedelic entanglement in [Brain Hell]. It is like an Orsay math problem with some of the problem settings hidden and only given With limited conditions, the audience must give a perfect answer within the stipulated time. The stunning plot design of this movie reflects Shane Carruth's dual identities: engineer and director.
Where does the "experimental" movie go?
As long as the audience with some experience in watching movies can see the director's jerky plot rhythm and plot design. The collage of the almost dull experimental plot in the first half of the film and the extremely sharp crossing plot in the second half of the film creates two inconsistent styles. The explanation of the background and clues in the story is also too free and casual. Among them, it is especially the case that Granger, another traverser who entered indiscriminately, and the two prevent the gunmen from lining up. All of the above reflects that the new director has insufficient control over the tension of the script and the development of the story. The film won the 24th Sundance Film Festival Feature Film Jury Award, which is undoubtedly an encouragement to the experimental spirit of the film, and also an appreciation for the film's ability to produce such a complex timeline at such a small cost. As for whether the original intention of the movie itself is to reflect the evil of human nature, or the demise of the time machine version of gamblers, maybe it is not so important.
Because people who have watched this film will ask themselves a question: If you give Shane Carruth 200 million dollars, God knows what movie he can make?
Maybe, take a director training class first.
2009-11-18
Originally published in "Watching Movies"
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