Primer

Primer is a 2004 independent film written, directed, produced by and starring Shane Carruth. A sci-fi puzzle thriller, it explores the effects of an accidental invention on its two creators. more...

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Famously produced for $7,000, the film played at festivals, collecting the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004, before receiving a limited release. It has since been released to DVD.

The film is unusual in that Carruth, a former engineer who immersed himself in the study of physics while writing the screenplay, makes little effort to explain or \"dumb down\" the physics theory-laden conversations of the protagonists. He also does not explicitly spell out what is happening in the film nor exactly what the device the young inventors create does, leading one reviewer to claim that \"Anybody who claims they fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar.\"

Plot

The film takes place in the industrial park and suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed US city. Four engineers - Aaron, Abe, Robert, and Phillip - work for a large corporation during the day, and run a side business out of Aaron's garage at night designing, building, and selling their own electronic products. Due to a difference of opinion on where the group should go next, Aaron and Abe independently take to designing a compact high-temperature superconductor. Their device is an improvement upon traditional superconductivity; but an unexpected side effect of the machine has far greater implications.

Abe and Aaron confirm that they have accidentally created a time machine after they test the device on their watches. They immediately cut Robert and Phillip out of the group by claiming that the garage has to be fumigated. The device is unlike a traditionally envisioned time machine; it can only \"travel\" back to its turn-on time, and the user must spend as much time in the machine as he wants to go back. They first use their machines to succeed in the stock market, but as they begin to explore how the machine can allow them to alter not only their personal lifestyles but how they are perceived by the people around them, ethical and philosophical dilemmas soon ensue regarding the applications and dangers of the machine. The film explores different individuals' reactions to the power of foreknowledge, the temptation of correcting the smallest detail of one's life and the ramifications of that abuse of power as it inevitably creates side effects on a larger and unforeseen scale. The two characters become engaged in the increasingly complex nature of alternate realities, that are referred to in the movie though not explained. There are nine timelines in total, generated by trips taken by the various characters, and many temporal paradoxes, such as the predestination paradox.

Read more at Wikipedia.org