Some recent rentals, proceed with caution.

[Kam]

Kam,

Thanks for being the point man for the obscure. I'll definitely check out Primer.

BTW, I searched out and found Y Tu Mama Tambien based on your mentioning it here and I believe we may have discussed it before. However, the more I thought about the conduct of the characters, particularly the female, the more I began to think the narrator could not be trusted. This is a clever device often used in literature in which the person telling the story is either intentionally distorting the truth or is telling only one side. I think the female character played/manipulated those young guys to the hilt, but I didn't come to that conclusion until a couple of days after watching the film because while watching it the narrator tries to convince you (with an objective-sounding tone, no less) that everything she does is with the guys' best interest in mind. Then again, I don't speak Spanish so something could have been lost between the spoken word and the subtitles.

gonna pull this down off the shelf and check it out again along with Amores Perros and have a double feature with them.

but the untrustworthy/lieing narrator, i think, is one of the best story telling devices around, and when it's executed makes for the best movies. the first time i ever came across it, and loved it, was the original The Jungle Book with sabu and it's own lil trick ending. I was blown away by that simple little twist. other, more recent classics would be Memento, The Usual Suspects, anything by lynch because you never can get a grasp from who's pov the story is being told, and Fight Club. of course when its done wrong, you never remember the movie again.

[noddin0ff]

Just rented Primer last night. What a great movie. Thanks for the recommendation! I can’t believe the shoestring this was made on. I can’t think of a single way a bigger budget could have improved this movie (exept for taking it from 2.0 to 5.1, heh, heh).

I thought one of the more ironic parts about renting Primer was that I wanted to keep going back in time to figure it out. The movie was only 85 minutes but I think I watched it for just over 2 hours with all the rewinding. I'm not really sure I figured it out, but I don’t care. I’m still thinking. I’m still thinking of watching it again. I think that's how you're supposed to feel with a paradox. Suffice it to say, you can’t watch this movie without paying attention.

I read some reviews that made comparisons to Momento and Donnie Darko. Toward the end of my viewing, my thought was that the closest philosophical comparison might be to Groundhog Day. Bill Murray got to leave when he got it right. But, what if there was no 'right' and do-overs were your choice?

[noddin0ff]

Did anyone notice the names of the characters, Aaron and Abe, could be for for A>A and A>B?

[Kam]

that's a good catch! the a/a, a/b thing, didnt even notice that. if you want, i can post this review/recap i read where they outlined exactly what happenned and broke down what/how he did what he did. it might not be the definitive answer, but it made sense as to what was going on and which 'aaron' (i get them confused, maybe abe, the darkhaired one) is the one that got on the plane and we see working in the hangar making a giant version of the machine in the end. that's the part i thought was fascinating, because it wasn't the aaron i thought it was. if you remember the one scene where he's removing all the other aarons, one of them fights back, and that's where i got confused as to which aaron continued from that point on.

very fascinating movie. and that budget, it is unbelievable, but what's more ridiculous, is they shot a nearly 1:1 ratio. that is, what you see, is EVERYTHING they shot.

[noddin0ff]

Yes, I'd be interested in reading more. I'm content with my conclusions, but now that I've obsessed over figuring it out, I might as well follow to the logical end! The 1:1 is amazing. Leave it to an engineer. I suppose everyone must have been playing to type anyway. I know I felt like I was back in college listening to my ME, EE friends pondering the possibilities and limitations.

I'd like to know what the plans for the BIG box are/were.

[Kam]

So for anyone who hasnt seen it, please do NOT read the below, this is spoiled in great detail. I found this from IMDB, where a guy there posted in and is a great explanation as to everything that happenned (from his pov at least) in the movie and i pretty much agreed with it.
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Abe (light-hair guy) and Aaron (dark-hair guy) and their two friends have a small business running out of Aaron’s garage, constructing specialized PC cards (for connecting external devices to check them for errors through a home computer). They work at that when not busy with their day jobs as engineers. The corporation was set up with some kind of agreement to do Abe and Aaron’s idea first (the PC cards, I assume) and when that was off the ground to go to whatever the other two guys wanted to do.

During the time of developing the cards, however, Abe has come up with an idea he wants to work on. This idea would have real value… a room-temperature superconductor. Rather than knocking out resistance of a ceramic plate with large and expensive cooling apparatus, Abe thinks he can reduce resistance with an enveloping magnetic field [don’t ask me to explain how that was supposed to work…]. So Abe and Aaron, not wanting the other two in on this project too much, and especially not wanting all the equipment in the garage being used for the other two’s project instead, try to manipulate their business partners into relinquishing the right to their ‘turn’ (this is what the whole kitchen discussion at Christmas is about).

Abe and Aaron get their way through being childishly immature, and proceed with their brilliant design. Phillip and Robert are allowed in on some aspects, but are kept largely in the dark. Once the machine is principally constructed, they do a test run. With some of the magnetic interference on they drop paper dots over the machine, which proceed to fall just short of levitation, which falls in line with a near-superconductor. So, they proceed to put on full power, so to speak, by surrounding the plates with a metal box, through which will be routed an electromagnetic field to eliminate resistance in the plates, via Abe’s theory. One catch, with the box on they have no way of seeing inside, until Abe puts Aaron’s camcorder inside (with some kind of consumer night-vision) promising to pay him back if, say, the electromagnetic field fries all its circuits (think EMP bomb, maybe).

Keeping an eye on the weeble inside the box by way of a cheapie monitor on Aaron’s ping-pong table, Abe and Aaron power up the plate inside their argon filled box. They don’t see the weeble do a lift-off, but the scale that has been placed inside (with it’s LED display wired in but on the outside world) shows grams start disappearing. Ahh, the levitation of superconductivity!!! For the full effect, they proceed to power up the box itself, AND--something blows out (to do with one of the car batteries, I assume).

Skip to several months later (March, I believe?). Aaron has managed to stabilize the box, by feeding with electricity slowly, then shutting it off before the box goes berserk. Doing this, the box continues to use power, power that the batteries are no longer supplying, as both are disconnected. So, is this just a glorified, slow-release capacitor, or is something much much more?

Abe continues working with the box to prove his theories, until he discovers a year’s worth of mold activity is going on inside the box in a single day. Weird and toxic. Without letting Aaron in immediately, Abe investigates. Some strange incubator for mold? No…
Rather, time inside the box is different than on the outside. Time proceeds forward normally while the box is powered on, but when it is turned off time starts going backwards to the moment the machine was activated. At this point is goes forward again, then back, then forward , then-- You get the picture. It does this about 1300 times, at which point time (or perhaps just the weeble?) jumps its way out of the loop through some mathematical probability. So, the tiny little mold spores that made their inside the box have experienced over 1300 minutes (all of them the same minute, in a way) whereas we on the outside have experienced only one. How’s that for a dissertation, eh?

Before approaching Aaron with this wacked out theory, he wants to be able to prove it to both of them. So he constructs a coffin-shaped frame out of PVC pipe, surrounds it with plastic sheeting, and fills it with argon. He puts powerful electromagnets on the box at set intervals, so that their combined magnetic fields leave no gaps around the box. He turns the box on (with a timer, so he is not present when it actually kicks into action) in the morning, sits in a motel room all day, and gets in the box (at the UHAUL place) in the evening, taking with him an oxygen supply and something to help him sleep. In this way he travels back to the moment the box activated. At this point he jumps out of the box now that time is flowing the same direction as the outside world and, well, he gets dressed. He goes and finds his buddy Aaron and explains his whole theory to him. Aaron is a tad incredulous at first, wandering between jubilant belief and distraught un. Then Abe and he eat fast food sitting on Aaron’s truck outside the UHAUL facility. Abe hands a pair of binoculars to Aaron and indicates that he should look closely at the blond guy entering the storage area. It is, of course, Abe who has just come from the motel room he spent his entire day in. A hypothesis/theory is thus confirmed.

Now, time for Abe and Aaron to cash in, so to speak. The word for today is “stocks.” In the morning they set timers on two machines, then, leaving a car for them to use in ,well, a minute or two, drive off. They check in at the hotel, throw a ball around all day, then log in at a library to see what mid-cap stocks have risen just enough to net a considerable profit with no risk of drawing attention. This done they get in the boxes, breath through their oxygen masks, wait for the timer, and get out. Foolish Aaron gets out while time is still moving backwards (so to us he gets out considerably after Abe does) and feels pretty bad for a bit. After Aaron has gotten his progressive-time-feet back again, they exit and get into the car that they left for themselves either three minutes ago or a number of hours ago (“depending on your point of reference,” as Aaron would say). Out in the world now, they buy stocks online and cash in at the end of the day. Can you say “rich”?

So, they follow this same basic program for three or four days, quickly getting bored with the time stuck in hotel rooms and exhausted with the hours they have added to their days. They generally get more careless about which stocks they buy into, looking only for the highest percentage rise. They leave the TV plugged in and, of course, Aaron leaves his cellphone on in both places as he experiences the same day over, causing panic from Abe over how the network works.

After only a few days trading, these two have more money than they can start spending without drawing all kinds of attention--Aaron particularly doesn’t know how to explain his sudden wealth to his wife (Abe thinks he should just tell her the truth). So, they become bored.

Boredom finds what is seen as a solution when Aaron decides he wants to use the machine to see what it would be like to break his boss’s nose. Abe, good friend that he is, thinks he has found a way, since he has developed a habit of leaving the machines on for extended periods of time. When a kid messing around triggers all the car alarms on his block it wakes him up and he heads over to Aaron’s to wake him up. They can drive over to the boss man’s house, punch him out, then hop in the machines and scare the kid off before he sets off the alarms. That way, the alarms never wake Abe up, Abe never wakes Aaron up, and (they think) Aaron never socks the man. Fun all around.
But on the way to do the aforementioned slugging, Aaron notices a friend (a rich guy he’d been trying to get invested in the business) sitting in a car outside his (Aaron’s) house. That doesn’t sit right, especially when he realizes that he’s seen the man hours before with a lot less five o’clock shadow.
Just to make sure, Abe uses his cell to call his ex-girlfriend, the rich guy’s daughter Rachel. He asks for her dad’s cell number. He calls it, gets the guy, and he’s not talking to the guy in the car. Apparently, Abe and Aaron aren’t the only time-split duplicates on the planet.

Outraged, Aaron jumps out of the car and runs at the copy in question. Foot chase ensues, and the other guy ends up out cold on the lawn. Comatose is the term used, I believe.
Since there couldn’t be a duplicate of this guy without the machine, and since Abe and Aaron think he could only learn of its existence from one of them, they begin to argue over who squealed (and why). It is clear that things cannot be the same ever again from this point, so Abe decides to undo everything. He goes to “the failsafe machine.” Through this machine, which has been running from before Abe sent himself back in time on the first try, he sends himself back to see that Aaron never learns of the machine’s time-travel abilities. He drugs the still-sleeping original Abe and takes his place.

This should have been the end of it, in Abe’s mind, but it was not. Because Aaron undid the Abe’s undo. “How?” He builds time up inside itself by turning machine on inside machine. In this way he is able to travel back before any of the machines were even built. In this way he attempts to prevent any harm from coming to his unimaginable power of time travel. He proceeds to put the alternate Aaron’s that exist in those time periods out of his way by drugging them and placing them in the attic. And on his first run back through past events (you might say his second time through these points in time) he records on audio tape every word that is spoken between himself and any other person. In this way he can remain referenced on his next--his third--time through (and any other times through that may prove necessary) and make tiny changes in what he says to manipulate those around him to do exactly what he wants.

A new problem automatically arises from this however, or at least from the drugging of the alternate selves. Before, when he would get out at the moment the machine was turned on, he would exist in the same time period as another Aaron, but then that Aaron would get in the box (just as he had in his “past” or his memory, as that simultaneous occurrence was his “past”) and cease to move forward in time. In this way, only for that one day would more than Aaron exist. Once Aaron begins to go back and prevent the alternate self from proceeding, but rather proceeds in his place, that drugged alternate will now never get the box disappearing from forward-flowing time. A permanent “copy” has just been created. Messy, ain’t it?

Aaron is now ready, tapes in hand, to go back through for the second time (or through for the third time) Aaron is affecting time in another way. He has already averted having the secret of time control ripped from his hands, and now he is addicted to the added power of controlling time beyond times that were prepared for in advance (times when the machine was turned on already to enable that particular trip to that particular time) and is planning to do something bigger and more personal with it.

The new plan arises from something his wife said, I believe. When she hears him refer to wishing he could knock his boss silly, she says “Finally, my hero.” Meaning she has apparently always found him a wuss who was unwilling to stand up for himself. Aaron cottons to this macho perception. So, being richer than he can actually admit safely right now, he goes after something perhaps more desired than money. He decides to achieve a reputation.
To do this he sees to it that one of Rachel’s ex-boyfriends, a bit of a maniac, shows up at a party. The ex will proceed to scare everyone with a shotgun, then leave without hurting anyone. Aaron’s plan is to take the shotgun from him in a show of force and become, well, a hero. Without getting killed, of course.

Well, that end takes a few more times through than he anticipated. Every little thing… has… to be… just… right. Somewhere in one these, one of his doubles gets the upper hand. Aaron (the one making all these trips back) is wearied by the journeys and slips up. He’s surprised by his double’s presence and isn’t quite able to take him in a fight, apparently. The power, and hints of power to come, have turned this back-tracking Aaron into something of a maniac, however, and the double who wouldn’t be content to be shoved in the attic decides to go on his way elsewhere.

Abe, in one frame of reference or another, realizes that his failsafe didn’t do the trick. Aaron has outsmarted him with the “box inside a box” scheme. And, seeing that his seemingly perfect solution to the nightmarish confusion surround his life has not worked, chooses to simply help Aaron become the hero he desires to be.

The hero scheme finally works perfectly. “It must have been beautiful,” Aaron-who-left says. At this point, Abe tells Aaron to get on a plane and leave. To never interfere again with the lives that he has wreaked so much havoc in. Abe will be watching things, he will go back utilizing box-within-box travel--back to a time when Abe and Aaron hadn’t even thought of a time travel application. He will sabotage his (alternate self’s) own superconductor device every step of the way, until Abe and Aaron entirely give up on the project. There will be no more duplicates, no more confusion. He hopes.

And then, just before the credits roll, we see Aaron--that first Aaron who left--trying to figure out how to duplicate his other selves’ time-travel device. Yes, somewhere, in some French-language country, this early Aaron is constructing a box the size of an airplane hangar. Beautiful.

[GMichael]

Kam, are you trying to give me a headache?

How many doubles where there?
Did you ever find out who the "other" time splitter was?