I've watched Primer three times now - the second time with subtitles on, the third time with the director commentary on. For those who haven't seen it, it's a great indie-geek time-travel movie. If you haven't seen it, stop reading this blog entry and go rent the DVD. If you have, and are wondering what the heck was going on, watch it again, or read some of the forums - the best explanation I’ve read is the blog entry by Francis Shanahan. The only thing I’m not entirely sure about (that people seem to believe but doesn’t seem necessary to me) is that Aaron took one box back in time through another. My assumption through the movie was that the failsafe was started on the first moment that Abe decided to go back through time – it was called the ‘failsafe’ because it could get Abe back to a time where he could change something small so that he wouldn’t be able to build the box and stop the whole thing from happening (or something). Aaron’s obsession was with the party (which happened after Abe had first gone back in time, so the failsafe must have been already running). Of course, the failsafe at some point reads a display for how long it’s been running – 3 days and 22 hours – so perhaps Aaron does have to take another one back, so he can keep going back until the ‘right’ day. But that particular detail of the movie didn’t make much sense to me – because if Abe was planning on building a true ‘failsafe’, he would have had it running the whole time… BTW, the forum is also an interesting source of info… Read More...