Primer

Sometimes a film comes along that is a real breakthrough, one that's made by an unknown genius who's work of breathtaking brilliance lands into a major festival (Sundance) and unleashes its radiance onto the welcoming masses. This film is not it. Well, it was made by an unknown director and it did make Sundance and it did get a widespread release, but it was not genius and it was not brilliant. Frankly in fact, it wasn't even good. Or OK for that matter. No, it was just terrible. So to be precise this was a film by an unknown who's incompetent film lands into a major festival (Sundance) and unleashes its twisted, contrived, incomprehensible mess of percieved radiance onto the unsuspecting masses. What happened here? Well, it's a simple case of the emperor with no clothes.

This film centers around two young engineers who while tinkering with other projects, discover some science which allows them to build a box to travel in time. Once they do travel in time, they discover all kinds of paradoxes which unravels their lives. There's nothing else to know here folks, even though a lot of other stuff happens, but it just doesn't make any sense nor do we really care.
First, there is really no character development at all. The entire first half hour of the movie is nothing but dialogue- incomprehensible dialogue due to their heavy science talk and very poor audio, which makes turning on the subtitles a necessity. Even if you do turn on the subtitles, you still don't know who's saying what because four characters are all talking at the same time over on top of each other. The science that they discuss concerns the mechanics and theory behind the time machine and employs very big science words which will make no sense to the average viewer. Well, guess what? It makes no sense to anyone. My girlfriend is about to get her PhD from Princeton in physics and she stated that although the words they use are real scientific terms, they actually make no sense when strung together in the sentences and contexts used in the film. I did a little research and looked at reader reviews on Netflix and there were at least 3 or 4 scientists and/or engineers who wrote in stating the same thing. Even though they had spent most of their lives acquiring a high level of scientific knowledge, the film still didn't make any sense. Even without taking anyone else's word for it, if there really was a science for creating a time machine, wouldn't there be a time machine already? Think about it. And that is very relevant considering how much high-brow science talk there is in this boring, borish film.

In the second part, our heroes enter the time machine and go back in time to place winning stock purchases and make lots of money. Then everything goes to hell as they have to deal with the ramifications of time travel and avoiding their "doubles." At this point, a variety of characters and plot points enter and quickly leave the story- something about a murder at a party, some guy on the floor, someone getting poisoned. Not really sure what happened but it was so disjointed, with no explanation or back story that it just made no sense. Further, I didn't care about finding out because there was no character development so I didn't care at all about the characters or what happened to them. Terrible filmmaking all around, much of the film was extremely grainy. This was a low-budget film, it can't compete with Hollywood for effects and stars, etc, but what it can do very effectively is tell a story with powerful characters that we care about. While I commend Shane Carruth, the director, for making a feature on film for only 7k (I'm sure that was only for production, not post), it is astounding for me that he got his film into a major festival while making a no-budget film with absolutely no character development, the killer of all no budget films.

So, going back to the original fairytale ride of this film- Shane Carruth, unknown makes a 7k film that launches him in Sundance. What they'll tell you is that this is such a high concept film, so brilliant in its intricacies that to truly get it, it must be watched multiple times, and even then a background in science would be beneficial. Well, I am here to cut through the bs and tell you that there is nothing to get, there is no science, there's just Star Trek talk. Accomplished research scientists don't understand it because big, important words are just added for effect and the dialogue adds up to nothing. So if research scientists don't understand it, do you honestly think that the jury of Sundance, a group of filmmakers and whoever else, who probably save for some rare exception have the same science knowledge as the rest of the population, did understand it? Does anyone honestly believe that? What happened here is that someone (who didn't understand it) thought it was brilliant (because they didn't understand it) and then told someone else who also thought it was brilliant (because they didn't understand it and the other person thought it was brilliant and they didn't want to seem stupid) who then told someone else (to make themselves seem smart again) who then thought it was brilliant (to keep up with all the seemingly smart people who got it) and so on and so forth. And pretty soon you get a bunch of people who think a film is brilliant and they don't know why. The end.

Save yourself some time and avoid this pretentious dog.

The abundance of choice

There was a study done recently where some researchers put out a variety of jams for consumers to purchase in a store, about 3 or 4 varieties. Sales were brisk as consumers were interested in trying the varieties and seeing which one they liked the best. Then the researchers placed even more, much more varieties of jam, twenty or so, thinking that this would stimulate sales even more. However, to their astonishment, what happened was the complete opposite. Frustrated by the enormous amount of choices, consumers decided to spare themselves the ordeal of having to make a difficult choice, and ended up buying nothing instead. Apparently, the presence of more choices had an inhibiting effect on consumer behavior. Researchers concluded that the less options (within reason) that consumers are presented with, the more likely they are to buy.

In my days as a music promoter, this reality was all too clear, as the plethora of choices that New Yorkers had at their disposal for spending their nights made New York the hardest city to organize events in, although New York is the largest city in America. Think about it: New York, the largest city is the hardest city in which to get a turnout. Of course, this is logical since, in addition to more people, there is also more competition here.

However, the abundance of choice goes far beyond competition, as can be seen by the jam experiment. What does this have to do with film? Well, a lot, since this overabundance of choice has also influenced my "film community" activities as well. For example, in the past few months, Michel Gondry and Darren Aronofsky were both giving talks at the Apple Store in SoHo. Was I there? No, even though I was interested in going and even invited some friends. It is true that both days were stormy, rainy, miserable days, and I would have had to go out of my way to get there, but if I was back in Ft. Lauderdale (circa 1996) I most definitely would have been there, no excuses. Back in the day, I drove 1 hour to see Oliver Stone speak in Boca and I drove down to Lincoln Rd. in Miami Beach on a 30 degree day (yes, in Miami) to see Kenneth Anger. Of course, there was hardly anything film related at all happening in Southern Florida at the time, so having any prominent director down there was cause for treating it as a big day. In NYC? Well, not so much. I live near the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, and of late, I have missed Forrest Whitaker, Tony Jaa, as well as a whole host of others, which I can't remember right now present their latest films. Granted, being a member of the museum, I have seen quite a few films there and have seen some prominent directors like Francois Ozon present their work, and I was busy those days after all, but something is still wrong when I have absolutely no remorse or regret about not stepping out of my apartment to go a short distance to see some amazing directors and films.

Maybe I am just jaded, or maybe these particular directors don't really move me deeply, or maybe I've moved beyond a starstruck attitude and just see these guys as ordinary people who may or may not be boring to hear talk, and perhaps I realize that, having been to a lot of these things before, it's not all that mind-blowing and amazing after all. But maybe there is more to it than that. Maybe it's a New York thing.

Yeah, blame it on New York.