Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 10:24:03 -0400
From: Jim Kling <jkling at nasw.org>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Seeing PRIMER
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Thursday, October 14, 2004, 9:29:13 AM, you wrote:

> Hi all,

> Did anyone see the movie, PRIMER, on Monday night or
> are you all too stunned to talk about it?  Usually
> there is someone who says something about a club
> event.

We saw it -- Lee, Alexis, Sam, Rebecca, Keith, Tracy Kremer, and I. The unanimous reaction was that it was
incomprehensible. It seems that the filmmakers decided to do an experiment in which every important plot
development happened offscreen, leaving it to the viewer to piece together what had just happened. It's a
technique that could be successful if used sparingly, but not when it is done at *every* plot development in
the film.

Sam and I theorize that the film won an award due to the Emperor's New Clothes effect. None of the viewers
understood it, and either concluded that it must therefore be profound, or were afraid to admit that they
didn't understand it (which I can identify with, having concluded initially that I was at fault for paying
insuffficient attention).

Despite the terrible production, the idea behind it was quite interesting. Engineers build a machine that
allows them to build copies of themselves and travel both forewards and backwards in time (or something, I'm
still confused about it), and this causes some interesting causality problems, especially when their doubles
behave in ways that are unexpected but completely in character.

Had it been told well, this would have been a very good movie. As it is, there's not much to talk about
because, what can you say about a movie that made little sense?

--
Jim Kling
science writer
Rockville, MD
http://nasw.org/users/jkling