(EDIT: Post moved and new thread started.)
I just watched "Primer." It's one of the movies listed in
this thread (just under "Spiderman") that you can see online for free.
If you have not watched this before you absolutely need to see it. I usually hate any movie that uses time travel as a plot device because it never makes sense.
It doesn't make sense because the technology involved is always necessarily magical (flux capacitors, anyone?) and it doesn't make sense because of the necessary violation of all kinds of physical laws and entropy, conservation of energy...stuff like that.
"Primer" is different. It ignores the science involved for the most part. The time travel comes as a side effect to another idea or discovery and the engineers who develop it have no idea
why it actually works since it wasn't what they were trying to achieve in the first place. So...they don't understand it and for the purpose of the movie and what the characters do with it they don't need to. Instead they figure out
how to apply it...how to
exploit it. The film makes all this stuff believable by cloaking it all in scientific geek talk and surrounding it with the normality of suburban living and industrial parks...a veneer of ordinariness.
From that point (when they realize what they have) things get very, very complicated. How complicated? After you have seen this movie once you will
need to see it again. And again. Probably several times. Why?
1) Because although the science of "why" is ignored the other issues of time travel into the past are very thoroughly and logically dealt with. Things like causation and free will, paradoxes, infinite loops, etc. and,
2) Because you aren't really sure what you are seeing...you
think you know what you are seeing until later in the film you realize that what you
thought you saw probably wasn't what you
really saw happen. Worlds within worlds within worlds kind of stuff that is difficult to wrap your brain around the
first and maybe even the second or third time.
This has the potential to be very irritating but it isn't because if you stick with it you come to realize that the logic all works...that you haven't been cheated...that the writer is right...and fiendishly clever. There are no holes in the plot once you unravel the whole thing.
A good film that is well worth the time spent seeing it. Even if you have to see it two or more times trying to puzzle it out.
Oh...and no bad language and no violence. This might sound boring but it isn't. There is enough mystery and suspense to keep you captivated once things begin to come together after the needed setup.
And...if you want to cut to the chase. See it one time and then click on the youtube video links (Primer Movie Explained Part 1, 2 & 3) that explain what you are really seeing...the "god" view of events.
Not bad for a film made on a budget of $7,000.00 It made a half a million when it was in theaters. I don't know how much it has made since.
EDIT: Posted here
