Primer - 1347 / You're Talking About Making A Bigger One...

[BuffloBuffloBufflo]

how do we know that this is not a fourth aaron sabotaging a third abe

[kentweirdo]

I love how Aaron is staring at the clock, and going through the motions. This isn't his first time through. He has a schedule.

[mickycisme]

4:15: Abe asks "so you believe me?"

4:17: the camera cuts to inside the garage, looking out. Abe is on the left, Aaron is on the right, and The Machine sits darkly between them.

4:23: Abe walks offscreen.

4:24: Aaron takes one last look at the sun.

4:27: Aaron walks into darkness, thoughtfully considering the machine.

That is basically the crux of the whole film, right there.

[MST3KLives]

One of the things I love so much about this movie is that I notice something new every time I watch it. . at the end of this clip when Abe asks Aaron if he believes him, Aaron nonchalantly says "No, I don't", . . almost as if he's reading a script, when this Aaron obviously believes what Abe is telling him. He's sticking to the script so that everything falls into place. Such a great movie.

[spadehatesscrewtube]

i so want my disfunctional motherboard to see my dvd right now, i have so many awesome movies to watch, this is one of them. "every 4(5?) feet every where" damn that showdown was the best

[mickycisme]

This scene is like an elegant math equation... Carruth's engineering background really shows.  When Abe says "... so I said 'screw it', and put my watch in there", Aaron immediately grasps the ramifications: "wait - digital? Or old, mechanical?" "Exactly... I did both."

Abe's dedication to detail and his need for Aaron to independently experience everything (ironic as hell, we later find) is the key to understanding this film - once you figure out WHY that was ironic, you'll know everything.

[mrkeogh]

At 1:05 its actually very difficult to tell if it is Abe or Aaron talking...I've always assumed it to be Abe, but listening to it now it definitely sounds more like Aaron. So...in some version did Aaron have to explain to Abe what the machine was?

[NickHannula]

The great thing about this movie is that it makes you experience it like the characters are experiencing it: you watch it over and over again, just like they are experiencing time over and over again.

[mickycisme]

@NickHannula You nailed it, Nick.

The only thing I didn't like about this film was the reaction from people who didn't/couldn't/wouldn't give themselves over to that experience. They tend to be pretty upset that they didn't get it, which is perhaps the fault of filmmakers who have spoon-fed them every little thing and not trained them to think about what they see. (One guy who sent me hate mail for making a positive comment under Primer's trailer compared Primer unfavorably to Ghostbusters.)

[andrewXransom]

@mickycisme I don't know, man. That first Ghostbusters movie is pretty awesome.

[Unclevertitle]

"I want YOU to do it." Such a good line in context.

Aaron:"That's 1347 minutes,"

Abe:"Okay yeah, 1347, you got that fast."

Wow, that's some EXTREMELY subtle foreshadowing there.

[kentweirdo]

@Unclevertitle

Failsafe, man. God, I love this film.

[ACriminalMind]

One of the most amazing and thought provoking space-time-causality theme movies of all time. I watched it 3 times in a row on first sitting back to back - couldn't get it out of my head. Amazing work!

[Ranked999]

amazing movie!"!

[GSDG55SGG]

My favorite movie !

GSDG55SGG

[Pr0x1mo]

I think the reason why is, lets say he goes back first time, when he's there he has no convo's recorded so he has to go by his own memory on how exactly he thought he responded when he first hand the convo, then he records it, so there's going to be a bit of a difference in dialogue. After the 2nd or 3rd time back, the convo's will be exact since he's just repeating what he's hearing, and everything falls into place.

[Pr0x1mo]

at :56 you hear this faintly: "We thought

that we were degrading gravity, right? That we were bIocking that information. I think we're doing more than that. I think we're bIocking more than that."

Then at 3:10 "We're bIocking whatever keeps it

moving forward, so they fIip-fIop."

[andrewXransom]

Right. I thought the recordings would be exactly the same. That is: he records a conversation and it is exactly the same when it happens. Not just kinda the same.

But... it wouldn't surprise me if it were meant to be what you're saying. The movie is quite secretive.

[KBGUY09]

@andrewXransom it would be exactly the same. except this is a different Aaron then the first time it happened. Maybe he did something to change the exact wording of what Abe was about to say. Something small--maybe he dropped something or just wasn't paying full attention to Abe, causing Abe to try to get his attention more and thus speaking a little differently. Correct me if I'm wrong...

[mickycisme]

@andrewXransom Well, Aaron *thought* it would happen exactly the same way, (or that it *needed* to, anyway), to the point that in the parkbench scene he kept repeating what was on the recording even when Abe's dialogue diverged. At :56 it's not perfectly clear if we're hearing the recording or Abe, but it is clear that Aaron (ticking the pliers and watching the clock) is showing impatience: he's heard this all before, and it's possible that in his impatience he has made things happen early.

[Pr0x1mo]

I never got the signifigance of 1347 minutes. Notice at how at :56 you hear a similar dialogue in the background/ear piece that they will at 3:10. And how after he does the math Abe says "1347, yeah you got that fast" (because this is not the first time Aarons done it, or he heard the answer already in his ear piece).

[andrewXransom]

I always thought the faint dialogue at :56 was what Abe was actually saying at the time, but Aaron was zoned out on the ticking of the scissors and the clock.

[mickycisme]

(Spoilers, obviously.)

@andrewXransom I thought Aaron was clicking the scissors and watching the clock because he was getting anxious to get to the point, having already been through this scene (at least once, maybe twice). The muffled audio, and the same words showing up later, shows us the big problem with Aaron's plan: the butterfly effect, the way small changes cause bigger changes.

In the final parkbench scene, Aaron knows this... so he sticks to the script even when Abe goes off-script.

[mickycisme]

@mickycisme & @andrewXransom:

Doh! Totally didn't notice that I'd written basically the exact same thing three months ago.

Actually that's kind of fitting, given the subject matter.

[trinitymike]

I never got that before: the reason Aaron got the math so fast....I thought it was just to show how bright he was....maybe Abe knows the answer that already; that's why he's impressed....this movie just goes deeper and deeper.

[Pr0x1mo]

you should go to the primer movie forums, there's a lot of discussion there about the movie.

[mrTacroy]

@trinitymike he does the maths fast because that's a double of himself who used another failsafe machine in order to take his own place to control the timeline as he wants. When looking for more details, that movie is WAY more complex than that. ( pay attention to the parabolic camera motion that illustrate the feynman diagrams, why exaclty are they bleeding?, who tells the story to who? (which aaron copy to whom?) etc...