2guys1box

I didn’t grow up with “Hard” science fiction, SF of the Isaac Asimov variety. On my bookshelf are ten-odd Star Wars novels – rather than disappointed with the Star Wars prequels, I was enthralled by them. The Phantom Menace was the second time I went to the cinema. I remember my ears hurting and George’s Lucas’ trademark Star Wars opening – a spaceship roaring into starry space. By 14, I was collecting the novels and reading Wookieepedia for trivia on all of Anakin Skywalker’s myriad flings with space-chicks. I committed John Williams’ score to heart. Then I bought Hard Contact (Karen Traviss), a game tie-in, a footnote against the sprawling mass of SW literature, and my view of what science fiction should be changed forever.

Instead of monks swinging laser swords and simplified hyperbole about the dark side like in the official Clone Wars novel series, it was about guerilla warfare, warfare that was less about colourful dicksabers and spouting one-liners and more about y’know, war. But what I really respected about the novel and its sequels was that it challenged the ethics of an army of cloned people bred solely to do battle. While George Lucas happily ignored this, Traviss came straight out and wrote the words “slave army” into canon.

Tarkovsky's Stalker is on my to-review list.

My definition of hard science fiction is simply this: it doesn’t pander. It doesn’t involve Ewoks or hot chicks or even a well structured narrative for the sake of netting a bigger audience. Hard SF is less about entertainment and more about purpose, be it art (Stalker, 2001), sociopolitical commentary (first half of District 9), or stretching imagination and possibility as far as it is reasonable (Primer). Wikipedia will tell you that it’s about conformity to real science, but personally for me its how uncompromising the creators are in service of their vision.

Were “hard” taken to mean “difficult to comprehend” or “highly scientific”, Primer would still qualify in spades. The setting is by comparison to the rest of the movie, childlike in simplicity: A small bunch of independent engineers, working out of a garage in suburban America, struggles to juggle day jobs and the side businesses they undertake together. Abe and Aaron, two members of this group, gather the materials for an experimental device, some sort of superconductor built to reduce the weights of objects. They argue in unfiltered engineer-speak about the project, salvage a microwave oven, exclude their friends, and on the big night, they turn it on.

It works, but there is a peculiar side effect: an object left in the machine gathers common fungus at an inexplicably fast rate. Subsequently, leaving a watch in the machine reveals that time passes differently in the box – it bounces between the times it is switched on and off. With an object in the box, this just means that it goes back and forth from the past to the future of the period during which the box is switched on, for a massive number of times – a time loop. But if the object in the box could choose to enter at the “future” end, and exit the box when time looped back around to the past… then you would have functional time travel, wouldn’t you?

"I wanted to see a story that was more in line with the way real innovation takes place."

Abe and Aaron build a bigger box and cautiously begin experimenting with sending themselves back in time every day, using their advantage on the stock market. Their traveling back in time gives them 36-hour days, and opportunity to glimpse their earlier selves – their doubles from the past who haven’t yet entered the box to go back in time. This presents new, mind-boggling questions. What if someone calls, whose phone would ring, the double’s or the original’s? What if you went back and stopped your earlier self from switching on the machine? If the machine is turned off how would you return to the past to switch it off in the first place? Recklessly, they eventually throw their caution to the time loop and plunge into the unknown.

I know it seems like I’m spoiling the whole movie for you, but Primer’s plot and dialogue becomes so utterly dense later, that trying to understand it without understanding it’s time-travel system first is as futile as teaching calculus to a brain-dead person. As if the multiple timelines and paradoxes that show up later in the film aren’t enough, this film was intended to to be increasingly incomprehensible; most people require upwards of two rewatches and a flowchart to get the final third of the film. First-time director Shane Carruth (who is a former engineer) justifies this by saying that if even the two characters who made the time machine know so little about how it works, why should the audience get off any better? Plot complexity issues ultimately come down to taste and tolerance – unlike Donnie Darko, it doesn’t even kinda make sense the first time – no traditional payoff for most of us staring dumbfounded at the screen. You may find it deep, you may find it pretentious. You have been warned.

You may have noticed I’ve neglected to name any of the crew except Shane Carruth, whom you’ve probably never heard of. This is because it was a first-time independent production, made with a mere 7000 USD, around 30k more to convert it to 35mm for Sundance. Yeah, that’s right, it went to Sundance. And won the Grand Jury Prize. Not impressed yet? Primer, all 77 minutes of it, was shot on Super 16 film. Get a person with experience in shooting film and he’ll tell you that that leaves your room for error very small, due to how expensive it is to shoot on film. For context, fellow indie darling Pi (83 min) was shot on the same film stock for 60k; The Daytrippers (87 min) was shot on Super 16 for 600k. Primer’s DVD commentary confirms that many, many shots were done in one take, with a heavy burden falling on planning. And plan he did – Shane Carruth is a self-taught filmmaker, and also got into grad-level physics just for this film.

This mostly one-take method of working becomes obvious in the numerous technical problems that pockmark the scenes like the freckles on your girlfriend’s otherwise pretty face. Framing goofs, film grain owing to a mix-up by the digital intermediate, focus issues, continuity, lack of coverage, poor location sound (mostly well-patched with dubbing). There’s a night scene at some fountains where the grain is everywhere and it is very difficult to hear what is said without the use of subtitles – epic fail in a movie that relies on dialogue. I forgave him even for these transgressions however, when Carruth points out the scenes that were shot guerilla style, in a few hours before passerby begin to interfere with the shot or the owners of the venue discover what is going on. Sometimes for scenes like this, he would shoot a line or two out of a character’s mouth and move on to the next line, neglecting master shots and running out of coverage during editing. I had the honour of making this mistake in one of my film projects in order to save tape, and trust me, I really really wish I hadn’t.

"I don't know why the first thing we shot had to be a long dolly shot that goes on for several minutes with action from all four of the lead characters, but we did it."

Then he has the audacity to shoot a heap of dolly shots, focus racks, and semi-long takes, month-long rehearsals notwithstanding. And have most of it turn out fine. Colour temperatures between shots seem to shift quite a bit between scenes, from greenish to blue to orange, some of it planned, but the constant changing works out in the film’s disorientating favour. And this wasn’t all luck. The DVD commentary – which I recommend very much to film students and indie professionals – gives you a sense of how much thought the director – also the composer, writer, actor, producer, and editor – put into Primer, how one shoots an experimental movie on film with an obscenely small budget.

Today’s films, and it is unfair to only blame Hollywood, are things you watch once. Common wisdom says it is foolish to pay twice for the same movie – why watch it again? How many times really, can you watch actors with little investment in their characters spit out the stock words again and again? I think it is sad that films are no longer treasured and brought out again to be scoured like a good, dense novel, to appreciate and marvel at all the little bits you missed. To study (yes, I know that is a dirty word) and gain a deeper knowledge of all the effort and deliberation put into the details. Primer is a film like that by necessity; it’s the only way to enjoy it. You treat it like a really difficult novel. I don’t blame you if Race to Witch Mountain starts looking good.

-Chen Sing