Primer

Primer (2004) starts with four engineers running a side project in a garage. Two of them build a device, and it takes them a while to work out what it does: it allows a limited kind of travel into the past. They try it on the stock market first, and then start dealing with copies of themselves. The fact most often cited about it is the budget: 7,000 dollars. Shane Carruth wrote it, directed it, produced it, shot it, edited it, composed the music and played the lead. The crew was five people. It was shot on Super 16mm, and because stock was expensive the shooting ratio was held at two to one, meaning barely one spare take per used shot. To make that possible, every shot was storyboarded in advance using 35mm stills. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 and the Alfred P. Sloan prize for films about science and technology. It grossed 841,926 dollars. Its reputation rests on being impenetrable. As one critic put it, anyone who claims to fully understand Primer after one viewing is either a savant or a liar. It runs 77 minutes. Good for: the logic of time travel, low budget independent film, and structures that reward rewatching. Less good for: the film explains nothing and the technical dialogue is deliberately opaque. The characters are hard to tell apart and there is no emotional handhold. Getting lost on a first viewing is close to guaranteed.