Primer - Confusing but rewarding

After the dismality of Iron Man 2 on Wednesday, on Thursday last week I watched a film that was billed as being about physics - how could I possibly go wrong? Primer is a story about a pair of amateur scientists who are trying to create something - anything - new in their garage in their spare time that they'll one day be able to patent and get rich on. The film opens with a few scene of them chatting with their scientist mates, discussing in reasonable technical detail what they're doing, trying to do and how to achieve it.

This inconspicuous start to the film made it intriguing and placed it importantly in the realms of reality. When our protagonists begin to build a machine of unknown properties that runs without battery power and they are unable to look inside, the story begins to come together slowly and mysteriously. Eventually they realise that they have created a machine that allows a user to travel back in time to the moment that the machine was turned on - ladies and gentlemen: we have a time travel film!

This is no 'Hot Tub Time Machine' though, this is a serious film about the causal and scientific implications of real time travel. Upon first trying the machine, the scientists concoct a series of schemes and ruses to ensure that they cannot interact with or be affected by anything that happened during the day they choose to relive. Soon though, they are unable to keep up with the paradoxes that they may or may not be creating. They begin to experience events that have been caused by future events they will never know - since their own present has now been changed - and begin to experience unknown physical lapses from their continual use of the machine.

The film becomes a paradoxical and logical minefield in the final 20 minutes, as there are revelations about the timeline that we - the viewer - have experienced and the relation of the main characters to it. My viewing experience was not helped by the LoveFilm DVD skipping several 30 second chunks of exposition - ably filled-in by this essay (pdf) on the meaning of the film. I've found numerous websites online that claim to explain the timeline of the movie, most consist of huge diagrams with arrows pointing all over the place. You have been warned!

You might think that a film requiring an essay to understand isn't really for you, and I fully sympathise. The film doesn't appear to have been written with the intention of being understandable by - well - anyone. But it is a mystery film above all else, and the best mysteries leave you asking plenty of questions at the end.