After a pretentious voice over introduces us to some blokes in a garage, our emotionally challenged, physics obsessed heroes plunge into unending technical conversations, speaking faster than any reasonable human being ought to speak. After I'd failed to comprehend any of this, they construct a machine which is equally baffling. Why and how they do this is an utter mystery, and it is small comfort that they seem to have as little idea of what's going on as we do.
Then suddenly. "Huzzah! We've built a time machine!". That's great lads! And then in a rehash of The Butterfly Effect which is drained of all interest, they earn lots of money via stocks, and do the stereotypical things everyone with limited imagination does with a time machine. Then The Nasty One (as opposed to The Faintly Decent One) does something bad, but the viewer is left with no clue what this unspeakable act might be because in all his wisdom, the director places this key scene next to a fountain which pretty much drowns out all dialogue.
In the end, our heroes have suffered for their temporal buffoonery, as they can no longer write properly (again, a less interesting take on The Butterfly Effect, or perhaps just a random reference to The Bell Jar) and The Nasty One has stopped a gunman. The drama of this amendment in history is tempered by the fact that the viewer has been totally unaware of any gunman before this point, and this is probably because of the noisy fountain. The Nasty One waltzes off abroad after falling out with The Faintly Decent One, who now feels Great Moral Guilt about their actions.
I was left feeling a mixture of awe at my own stupidity for not having a clue what was going on, and anger at the director for not helping me in any way. The overall impression was that someone had dramatized a particularly boring physics textbook. My advice to all those wishing to avoid similar torment: avoid Primer.
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| An intelligent person's perception of Primer |
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| How I perceived Primer |
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