Primer (2004)

Primer (2004), written, produced, scored, edited, starring and directed by Shane Carruth.

This micro-budget time-loop story is notoriously hard to follow in one viewing. We come to realize multiple versions of our characters have appeared and we are not sure which loop we are seeing. Important characters and events occur off screen and what we do see is out of order. What is being changed? We're given a narration made by one of them at some time.

You can find summaries on youtube and diagrams online. This chart seems as good as any: Primer: The definitive explanation and timeline.

You might make a more complicated plot but what would be the point?

Notes this time:

• Time travel is about hubris. The presumption! Never turns out good.

• The personalities of our inventors determines much of the outcome. Trust breaks down. Paranoia: actually you can do something about that.

• Don't they watch themselves exiting the storage facility more than once? Why don't their previous selves look around for them?

• Fearing they've altered the timeline: "Do you feel any different?" As if you could tell.

• At the beginning they are so careful about following the rules to prevent paradoxes. Later they stop caring.

• Repeated travel seems to be dangerous. Both are getting sick. Their handwriting has gone to hell. When they first developed the effect they held their hands over the machine. Maybe a bad idea?

• SF writer Fritz Leiber had a Time War series starting with The Big Time (1958). He talks about the sound of the "change winds" blowing outside of the protected chambers. You can hear some of that here.

Available on Blu-ray with two commentary tracks.