Primer‘s Sci-Fi Success Story Was an Anomaly, but Its Filmmaker’s Fall Wasn’t

A key component of Sundance Film Festival’s reputation is being the champion of low-budget independent filmmakers who exist outside of Hollywood. But does that reputation hold up to a closer examination of those who built careers from exposure there? The often referenced success stories of Richard Linklater, Darren Aronofsky, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh should also mention how they were helming projects backed by serious producers (Robert Newmyer was working at Columbia Pictures when he produced Sex, Lies, and Videotape), and that that many of their major breakthroughs had talent that had been in the business for some time (Reservoir Dogs boasted established actors like Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi). In this regard, the complete lack of funding or even tangentially related Hollywood talent made Shane Carruth’s Primer—winner of Sundance’s Audience Prize in 2004, 20 years ago—an anomaly even by the festival’s standards.

Primer’s setting (a suburban home), its cast (Carruth’s friends and family) and even its filming and lighting equipment (purchased by Carruth from Walmart) all reflect the movie’s DIY essence. And its modest nature added to its impressive form. It was the ideal: A total outsider making it big. 

The divisive responses appreciated its minimalist technique and scorned its near-incomprehensible, jargon-filled dialogue and looping non-linear narrative. Andrew Pulver of the Guardian commended Primer for an “unflinching naturalism” but criticized that its “narrative… is simply off-putting: in trying to be elusive, it’s simply obstructive.” 

This would be an understandable pain point for filmgoers whose exposure to cinema comes from Hollywood, where exposition detailing what’s going on is crucial—if it’s not immediately known, it must be easily deduced through clues and motifs hidden within a narrative. It was damn near radical then for a sci-fi film like Primer, one that found its way to a mainstream theatrical release, to have dedicated itself to being thoroughly obtuse about its own premise. Yes, we see time travel happen. We see the characters appear in various places, sometimes at the same time. We see the non-linearity of the editing forming a complex diagram. But we don’t know what any of it means. 

For some, this is the definition of pretension. For me, at least in the case of Primer, it’s a boldly successful experiment in turning something preposterous into something believable by making it as unintelligible as possible. So much popular sci-fi relies on making up concepts and explaining them in the simplest terms. The arbitrary use of words like “positrons” and “nanobots” or “plasma” are shoved in to create the illusion of scientific know-how. Carruth flips this in an ingenious way by correctly surmising that using actual jargon—while just as indiscernible on its face to most people—would automatically be given more credence through being lengthy and boring, the way an actual scientific lecture might be. 

At the A.V. Club, Scott Tobias suggested that Carruth created “a home-made wonder out of available materials…through little intangibles—subtle grace notes in the dialogue, a dense soundtrack, the suggestive use of screen space—that don’t cost a dime.” I tend to agree. What turns Primer into something miraculous is that Carruth’s background as an engineer works seamlessly with and bolsters his formal choices as a filmmaker. He creates imagery that concentrates on technology—so many shots consist of characters in the midst of industrial boxes, crates, wires and pipes—and makes it feel overwhelming. Without turning to obvious sci-fi settings, he keeps our mind and focus on the ways machinery, even retro and outdated, is an intrinsic part of our existence. The use of jargon intentionally obfuscates, turning the narrative device of dialogue into an aesthetic technique. Our inability to decipher the monotonous conversations that delve deep into fluid mechanics and quantum theory in turn make the uniquely preposterous situation (accidentally building a time machine inside a suburban garage) into a deliciously authentic anomaly.

The end result of Primer—a low-budget, technically dense, DIY film—was a product of Carruth’s controlling perfectionism. Primer, incorporating most of Carruth’s close friends as well as several family members, was made with only $7,000. Carruth was writer, actor, director, producer, editor, cinematographer and composer. Carruth was so fastidious in his specific demands for control in the face of distributors that THINKfilm’s Mark Urman said the negotiations were the longest he has ever gone through.

While Carruth’s dedication once seemed commendable in the sphere of indie film, it revealed a darker inner truth about his personality. Filmmaker Amy Seimetz, Carruth’s ex-girlfriend and co-star in Upstream Color, filed a restraining order against Carruth after—among other allegations—he barged into her hotel room and strangled her to the point of near-suffocation. The horrifying details of his abuse, which included direct threats on her life, was described by a psychologist as demonstrating “fixation.” 

Such abuse, which stems from an obsession with getting one’s way, should come as a direct refutation of the qualities that so many apply to (male) auteurs as necessary evils. And yet it’s not an uncommon story for celebrated filmmakers to succumb to their own sociopathic hubris, which for so long was described to them as a byproduct of their artistic genius. During this time, there were rumors of two new Carruth features: The Modern Ocean had a cast attached, while A Topiary was still just a script. Carruth’s social media meltdown, where he shared his scripts and declared that he was quitting filmmaking, came across as an unhinged artist resentful that the world of cinema no longer treasured his worst qualities.

Though it was eventually revealed as the first step in a sadly familiar pattern, Primer was still an exciting anomaly at the time. It was one of the last gasps of a Sundance Film Festival that hadn’t yet abandoned outsider cinema, giving into a festival atmosphere that more and more valued the vapid Hollywood fluff of established actors directing vanity debuts. Primer’s success was one of Sundance’s last true triumphs of self-made cinema that launched an exciting career…which its own director promptly killed.

Soham Gadre is an entertainment and culture writer based in Washington D.C. He has written for Polygon, MUBI Notebook, The Film Stage, and Film Inquiry among other publications. He has a Twitter account where he talks about movies, basketball, and food.