Brain Exploding

I went to see a screening of a film called Primer last night. It made me nostalgic, because it was in a screening room just like the screening room at the Coolidge in Brookline. D said "This isn't what I expected" to which I responded "This is exactly what I'd hoped for."

Our journey to the center where the film was shown was lovely, because it was snowing again. Large, fluffy, romantic flakes of snow near the glowing trees of Central Park. I was so happy. I kept thinking "This is what I wanted from New York. This is what I want. And I have it. How new."

The movie was nuts. It was made with no budget. It stars the writer and director and various of his family members and friends, and his friends' family members. If I had to guess, the writer/director is/was a scientist-turned filmmaker, who thought "I have no budget, what do I have access to for sets?" and, like me, when I've had these thoughts, he thought "Well, I have friends with apartments and access to labs, so I'll make a science movie!"

The science was incomprehensible, but it's not important that you understand the Physics. Something about argon and tubing and resistance and a box and a protein and voila! Time travel.

It really explores the dark side of science and time travel. This movie was such a mind fuck. It's the kind of film you need to watch 10 times, and each time have available to you a pencil and paper, preferably graph paper, to figure out what's going on. The moral implications are huge, and really stressed us out afterwards. As did the concept of knowing that your time travelling double could be out there right now doing things that you would or would not know about? I don't know.

Fucking weird.

I really liked it. You should all see it, but be prepared to be very very confused. It made sense for the first hour, but then got completely out of hand. We were trying to discuss it but couldn't, because neither of us really knew what happened. We could only hypothesize. And neither of us had a pen during the movie, so we weren't able to draw diagrams.

I think it was out of hand because it was actually a realistic time travel movie.

I love how as humans we are just unable to deal with the concept of time travel. It's beyond us. It's a dimension we can't comprehend. The implications are vast and scary and amazing. D was going on and on about his theory that time doesn't really exist, and I couldn't handle it. My brain almost exploded. I had to be like "Can we just not talk about this for like an hour because my mind hurts?"

I couldn't get my brain to shut down. I kept thinking "But no, there wouldn't be a double because of x.... and there would only be a double for x amount of time... but then what if the double went back in time too?... and if time is a loop and not a line, this doesn't work... or maybe it does... and what was going on when..."

It's so refreshing when something can have this profound and this new an effect on you as an adult. I feel good today, because I feel like something has been added to my life - philosophically, intellectually, artistically.

I am also inspired, because the guy who made this film changed his life. He must have. He had to have been a physicist or engineer at some point and thought "This sucks - I hate working for a company - I am going to be a filmmaker!" and then took what he knew and made an awesome movie that dealt with science, and a concept that appears often in movies, in a novel way. The movie was raw - there were no overdubs or lighting marvels. He worked with what he had, and made something amazing, which is actually kind of how science works. Take what you do know and see if you can find something that nobody's ever found before.

OK. I have finished gushing. See the movie if its screening near you.

I'm off to do science.