Puzzle Cinema

Some of the most complex and challenging storylines are those that revolve around the concept of time travel. Shane Caruth makes it almost impossible to keep up with Primer on the first watch. Even with guidance, timelines, and discussions, the film is difficult to grasp. What’s clear is that Aaron and Abe invent a device that functions as a time machine. Naturally, they try to use this discovery to their advantage and begin to exploit it. Wanting to stop a shooting at a party, the two repeatedly travel back and forth in time to gather the information they need to perform the scene. Along the way, they make mistakes with grave consequences and over-stress their bodies. But the audience is forced to draw connections throughout the film on its own. Caruth expects the viewer to spot their slip ups and understand the outcomes with practically no clues. To keep up, viewers have to keep a visual of the multiple timelines on their mind as they watch. Audiences, usually watching films for leisure, rarely expect to be asked of this much, and undoubtedly end up lost for the most part. The main thing that the film has to achieve, however, is to intrigue them enough to look further into it. There are countless discussions and websites on the internet of fanatics trying to fully understand the film. Debatably, this is the biggest success that a film can achieve -- making viewers care just enough to rewatch it.

A similar picture that comes to mind is the time travel animation, The Girl That Leapt Through Time by Momoru Hosoda. I was sent off to Ukraine for my 7th grade summer vacation to spend months on end with no internet or much television. The only entertainment I had was an mp4 file of this film on my new smartphone. It similarly tells the story of a girl who discovers time travel and attempts to alter her fate. Once discovering this power, she excitedly begins to overuse it, often to avoid uncomfortable situations or correct her faults. Like Aaron and Abe, she abuses this power, but her mistakes along the journey (which are vital to the story) are tricky to spot. I watched the film over and over again, noticing something new every time. Even by the end of summer, at which point I must have watched the movie over fifteen times, my understanding of the plotline wasn’t 100% complete. I obviously would have preferred to just watch a variety of movies or TV shows, or play video games, but I had fun immersing myself in investigating the complex puzzle of this film. Like The Girl That Leapt Through Time, Primer gives audiences an itch to solve its puzzle. With such a tight budget of $7,000, the film acts as a reminder that the brains behind cinema are much more valuable than the money.