Primer

I've been downloading a lot of podcasts lately to listen to on my i-pod, or when I am at work. One of the podcasts is called Mungbeam, and had a wonderful interview with Seattle-based cartoonist, Jim Woodring. Woodring creates a very freaky strip called Frank, which involves little or no dialogue, and has a very surrealistic bent to it. They are graphically very pleasing to look at, and Woodring is very good at creating a very specific world. A few years ago I went to see a great Jazz show at St Ann's Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn, which feature a terrific slideshow of Jim Woodring's charcoal drawings. Many of these drawings are the subject of his book, Seeing Things. Woodring claims to have suffered various "hallucinations and visions" throughout his life, and the cartoons he draws are a bi-product of those visions. During the interview, he was asked about movies and he mentioned that the best science fiction film he ever saw, was a low-budget movie called Primer. Well I had never heard of Primer, but of course I had to look it up. I saw on Netflix that it was out on DVD, so I pushed it to the top of my rental queue.

Fer and I watched it last night and were very taken with the inventiveness of the story. Apparently this guy put the whole movie together for about $7000. The price of a used car. He taught himself about editing and shooting and writing as he went. His own inventiveness echoes the thematic inventiveness of the film. The subject matter concerns these two physics students who are monkeying around with an experimental machine in their garage trying to invent something that will make them some money and consequently invent a time machine by accident. The movie poses some very interesting questions, and is shot in a very believable and realistic manner. I very much enjoyed it. We were so taken with the complexity of events, that we watched it again to listen to the director's commentary hoping to glean some information from him about "what exactly happened?" Purposefully he left a lot of things unanswered so it can be a little frustrating for the viewer. I understand his reasoning behind it though. If you're interested in a very "heady" sci-fi movie, I would recommend checking it out. Gets you thinking...