Post by klep on Mar 27, 2017 6:44:04 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 3/27: Primer
DEBUT WEEK
If there's one thing that characterizes Shane Carruth's work thus far, it's a near-maddening lock of interest in his own narratives. Instead, he focuses on his characters - choosing to make sure we understand their emotional conflicts rather than focusing on what's going on. Which isn't to say that Carruth hasn't got it all figured out himself. To the contrary it's abundantly clear he knows exactly what's going on; he's just decided that stuff is secondary.
Primer is a film with an incredibly twisted narrative. It's a time travel story, and it has multiple looping and self-altering timelines and it would be difficult to keep straight under the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances, because Carruth isn't interested in clarifying what timeline we're in, which version of the characters we're dealing with, or any of that. Because rather than making a story about time travel, he's using a time travel story to tell us about two characters Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth himself) and how their personalities lead them to conflict.
Aaron and Abe are friends and business partners when the film starts. They have regular 9-to-5s and are working on a side business out of Aaron's garage. Aaron is daring and resourceful, while Abe is cautious and pragmatic and the balance between the two looks like it serves them well. But when they accidentally create time travel, this difference in personalities causes their relationship to fray.
Abe sees their invention as something that can be great for them, but also very dangerous. He restricts his usage to carefully selected stock trades which can be hidden by volume, and isolates himself on his second trip through a day to avoid changes to the timestream. At first Aaron plays along with this (or appears to, at any rate), but it soon becomes clear that he has grander ambitions for their new technology. Aaron wishes not only to enrich himself, but to actually manipulate the timestream for the better, and the conflict between them ultimately leads to the end of their friendship - or at least the friendship of one version of them.
In this way Carruth examines the relationship between these men and its fracture points, but also addressing the ethics of time travel - all without making it entirely clear exactly how events are progressing. All we need to know is right in front of us: Abe believes in protecting the timeline and limiting causal effects, and Aaron believes in manipulating the timeline to make things better - at least, as he sees it. And we, the audience, are left to decide who is right.
Oh, and Carruth made this film on a $7,000 budget, just in case we weren't already feeling inadequate.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/3: The Handmaiden
CON ARTIST WEEK
With the beginning of April all the amateur conners and pranksters come out to deceive the world for a lark. For our own April Fools pick, we'll be watching one of our favorite films about the art of the con. Our pick is last year's underseen The Handmaiden, which was inexplicably not South Korea's pick for the Foreign Language Oscar. The Handmaiden is available for rent on Amazon Video, and it is new on Blu-ray Tuesday.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 3/23: Kong: Skull Island
The second part of last week's podcast looks at where Kong is now and how far he's come from his roots with a discussion of Kong: Skull Island. We'll have a thread for the podcast and this latest film about the great ape on Wednesday. Kong: Skull Island is still in theaters.
DEBUT WEEK
If there's one thing that characterizes Shane Carruth's work thus far, it's a near-maddening lock of interest in his own narratives. Instead, he focuses on his characters - choosing to make sure we understand their emotional conflicts rather than focusing on what's going on. Which isn't to say that Carruth hasn't got it all figured out himself. To the contrary it's abundantly clear he knows exactly what's going on; he's just decided that stuff is secondary.
Primer is a film with an incredibly twisted narrative. It's a time travel story, and it has multiple looping and self-altering timelines and it would be difficult to keep straight under the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances, because Carruth isn't interested in clarifying what timeline we're in, which version of the characters we're dealing with, or any of that. Because rather than making a story about time travel, he's using a time travel story to tell us about two characters Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth himself) and how their personalities lead them to conflict.
Aaron and Abe are friends and business partners when the film starts. They have regular 9-to-5s and are working on a side business out of Aaron's garage. Aaron is daring and resourceful, while Abe is cautious and pragmatic and the balance between the two looks like it serves them well. But when they accidentally create time travel, this difference in personalities causes their relationship to fray.
Abe sees their invention as something that can be great for them, but also very dangerous. He restricts his usage to carefully selected stock trades which can be hidden by volume, and isolates himself on his second trip through a day to avoid changes to the timestream. At first Aaron plays along with this (or appears to, at any rate), but it soon becomes clear that he has grander ambitions for their new technology. Aaron wishes not only to enrich himself, but to actually manipulate the timestream for the better, and the conflict between them ultimately leads to the end of their friendship - or at least the friendship of one version of them.
In this way Carruth examines the relationship between these men and its fracture points, but also addressing the ethics of time travel - all without making it entirely clear exactly how events are progressing. All we need to know is right in front of us: Abe believes in protecting the timeline and limiting causal effects, and Aaron believes in manipulating the timeline to make things better - at least, as he sees it. And we, the audience, are left to decide who is right.
Oh, and Carruth made this film on a $7,000 budget, just in case we weren't already feeling inadequate.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/3: The Handmaiden
CON ARTIST WEEK
With the beginning of April all the amateur conners and pranksters come out to deceive the world for a lark. For our own April Fools pick, we'll be watching one of our favorite films about the art of the con. Our pick is last year's underseen The Handmaiden, which was inexplicably not South Korea's pick for the Foreign Language Oscar. The Handmaiden is available for rent on Amazon Video, and it is new on Blu-ray Tuesday.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 3/23: Kong: Skull Island
The second part of last week's podcast looks at where Kong is now and how far he's come from his roots with a discussion of Kong: Skull Island. We'll have a thread for the podcast and this latest film about the great ape on Wednesday. Kong: Skull Island is still in theaters.