Primer (2004) - A somewhat better summary with a sequence of events

19 Sep 2017 movies · primer

Spoilers, don’t read if you haven’t watched the movie

Since my first post about Primer, I have watched the movie a few times. I have read some of the recent (and even old) threads on r/primer. I think I understand everything a bit better now.

The First Revision from Abe’s perspective

Trying to draw a complete timeline from the beginning is not that useful, but turns out to be the easiest way to understand the details of the movie:

• Sunday late night: Abe1 turns on the failsafe box with a few hourse delay and then goes to sleep.

• Monday 8:30 am: Abe1 turns the box on, proceeds to the hotel and stays there (he remains unreachable via his work or cell number, as Aaron1 says)

• Monday 8:50: Abe2 emerges from the box, there will be 2 Abes for the next 6 hours.

• Monday ~11 am: Abe2 goes to Aaron1 and tells him about the machine. He shows him the Protein buildup thing, in Aaron1’s office. Aaron1’s colleague tells him that he should tell Will that the Ariel meeting is pushed to Wednesday. Aaron1 goes to talk to Will while Abe2 gets the car round front. Abe2 ends up inviting Will to Robert’s birthday party. Will is also going to bring his cousin along. This cousin is Rachel’s ex-boyfriend.

  They now proceed to the lab where they see the protein buildup people. They go back to the “shop” and put their watches in, they realise what it is. Aaron plays basketball, he says they can publish. Abe2 and Aaron1 then get something to eat / drink and stop their car in front of the storage space place near freeway. It’s now approximately 3:15 pm

• Monday 3:15 pm: Abe1 walks into the storage space alongwith his Oxygen tank, while Abe2 and Aaron1 watch. “Who’s that, Abe?”, Aaron asks.

• Monday ~3:25 pm: Aaron1 and Abe2 go to the room and see the machine. The machine is turned off. Abe1 is going back in time inside the box. They don’t disturb anything, and leave after some time.

• Monday ~4:00 pm: Aaron1 and Abe2 are sitting in the car next to Aaron1’s truck. Abe2 gets a phone call from Rachel, he probably tells her that he’s going to be at Robert’s birthday party during this conversation. This is the reason Rachel appears at the birthday party. Abe2 and Aaron1 are washing dishes at home, they do NOT go to the party.

• Monday (before they return home for dinner and dishes): Abe2 and Aaron1 sit near the airport and discuss what Abe1 did. Presumably, they also build the box that Aaron is going to use. (1)

• Tuesday 8:30 am: Abe2 and Aaron1 turn the box on, spend 6 hours at the hotel. They use Abe2’s car to get to the hotel.

• Tuesday 8:49 am: Abe3 and Aaron2 emerge from the box! They take Aaron’s truck to go to Abe’s house.

• Tuesday before 12:30 pm: Abe3 and Aaron2 buy stocks of RGWU, the price is going to double in afternoon trading. They are going to make a lot of money.

• Tuesday 3:15 pm: Abe2 and Aaron1 turn the box off, about 5 minutes later, they get into the box and start travelling back in time.

• Tuesday 3:15 pm: Abe3 and Aaron2 are watching their doubles Abe2 and Aaron1 walk into the storage facility. The machines are running now, but their doubles will shortly turn them off.

• Tuesday evening: Abe3 and Aaron2 discuss with Kara about what they would do if they had a lot of money etc. This is the point where Aaron2 puts the idea out there: “Punch Platts and tell myself not to”

  Notably, probably tongue in cheek, Kara’s dialogue: “My husband, the hero” (knowing what’s going to happen next, this might very well have been the seed that planted in Aaron2’s mind that he can actually go back and change the party, although I wonder if Aaron2 (a) knows about the failsafe machine that would let him go back that far in time (b) knows about the shenanigans that Rachel’s ex-boyfriend pulls at Robert’s party. The whole day they have more or less not spoken to anyone, so I am skeptical on this.

  More importantly, Kara asked Aaron (no number, because to Kara there’s only one Aaron) to call pest control to clean the Attic out. But Aaron2 says that they are only birds and doesn’t call them. Is this because he really believes that they are birds, or because he knows that there’s an Aaron in the attic? (clarity on this later!)

(When does the grocery shopping scene and the petrol bunk scene happen? Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning?)

• Wednesday morning, 8:30 am: Abe3 and Aaron2 are going to take the trip again. They talk about how Aaron could tell Kara about it. The machines have been set to turn on at 8:45 am. Interestingly, one thing they do differently this time is that they take Aaron’s truck to the hotel instead of Abe’s car. Probably because Aaron wants to fill it up with gas? That seems to fit.

  So, austensibly, the petrol bunk scene happens on Wednesday morning. (?)

• Wednesday morning, 8:49 am: Abe4 and Aaron3 emerge from the box. Aaron3’s ear is bleeding, Abe4’s hand is. They talk about the dream and the tides that both of them seem to hear inside the box.

  Notably, this time, Abe4 and Aaron3 have taken Abe’s car instead of Aaron’s truck to return to Abe’s house.

• Wednesday afternoon: Abe3 and Aaron2 are at the library, still talking about telling Kara, flying to Costa Rica, etc. They decide to not tell anyone though. Aaron2 also mentions the innocuous “build a bigger box, because this one feels like a coffin” The word coffin will be re-used and is important.

• Wednesday 3:15 pm: Abe3 and Aaron2 get into the box once again.

And now, Aaron has become the hero

• Wednesday late night: Abe4 goes to Aaron3’s house and tells him about the Platts plan. They come out, see Granger, follow him around. Granger is now in a coma.

• Thursday early morning: 3 days and 22 hourse after the failsafe (not the original one, as Abe expects it to be, because Aaron has used it in between) was turned on, Abe4 gets into it alongwith the 3 oxygen tanks, water and the triazolam for his next 4 days inside the box. He is going to use the reset button, go back in time and not tell Aaron about any of this.

Till now, things were linear. Suddenly, there’s the scene where Aaron went to Robert’s birthday party. From Aaron’s dialogue later in the movie, we know that there were two versions of the party:

1. The one which Aaron didn’t go to
2. The one which Aaron went to and rushed Will (the ex-boyfriend)

(1) happened only once. (2) happens again and again, as the narrator illustrates. Aaron re-does it until he gets everything perfect, exactly as he wanted it.

In the timeline when Aaron does go to the party, which is what the world will remember because the final revision does have Aaron going to the party. In that revision, Aaron goes to the party on Monday night. Abe may or may not go with him.

The Second Revision from Abe’s perspective

• Sunday late night: Abe1 turns on the failsafe box with a few hours delay. He then goes back home, and sleeps.

• Sunday late night: Abe4 emerges from the box. He goes to his own house and eliminates himself because that is the only way to take control of the timeline.

• Monday morning: The box remains unused, Abe has probably decided to not use the box because he has seen the consequences and is definitely unnerved by them. He believes that Aaron doesn’t know about the box yet because he hasn’t yet told him about it.

• Monday afternoon: Abe goes to talk to Aaron, probably planning to tell him that he was unable to understand the “box” and they should move on with some other project because they have clearly hit a wall with this one. Instead, He faints because of his long, 3 day, no-food-just-water hiatus inside the box. Aaron-n, meanwhile, has a recording of the day’s conversations and is going to try and redo everything as it is to reverse engineer the party moment and be the hero once again.

  Aaron knows about the box whereas Abe believes that he doesn’t. Now, the HOW section will start making sense.

  In this revision, Abe knows about the box. Aaron knows about the box as well. This is the atmost information symmetry that they have ever had.

  Abe knows it’s consequences, having gone till Thursday. Aaron-n doesn’t, he hasn’t gone till Thursday early morning when Abe uses the failsafe. Nonetheless, he knows what happens till the night of the birthday party.

  As the narrator says, “At this point, there would have been some discussion”

*1: I feel like they are sort of stretching it here. They discuss what he did, plan their next morning. Apart from they also have to build a completely new box for Aaron1 to use the next morning. They don’t go the party the first time, so this gave them something like 7-8 hours to do everything and get back home, have dinner with Kara and Lauren, do the dishes, and wake up next morning to execute the plan. Since they didn’t go to the party, and Abe was around to tell him exactly how to build the box, this might very well be possible. It just feels really fast.

The one big question I have now is How did Aaron find out about the failsafe? When did he use it?

When he did use it, he went to Aaron’s house right after emerging from the failsafe (Aaron in the Hoodie), he drugs the milk and puts Aaron in the attic. Now, he is in control. The first time Aaron goes back, he records the conversations of the day. The next time he goes back, he brings the recordings with him, and then follows the script.

He also brings back a coffin with him at one point, because then, he can emerge from the box, start the coffin up and then go on with his Monday morning. That way, he will always be able to go back to Sunday morning. ( Remember that as soon as someone emerges from a box, they can’t turn it off. They MUST wait till atleast the time the machine has been turned off, their double has gotten in and it has cooled down before they can start it again. This is the meaning of one-time use only, they can use it only one time to go back to a particular point in time, the point when they start the machine. )

Finally, when Aaron comes back the first time, he drugs his double and puts him in the attic, but he can’t keep doing that. Starting from the second time, the Aaron who was already there convinces the Aaron who just emerged from the box to leave town so that he can continue on his plan. Seeing that the narrator left, it’s fair to assume that most of the Aarons would.

In my previous post, at the end of it, I ask a few questions.

Q1: Granger, how did he come back?

I have started to believe that Granger’s appearance is a jarring reminder to Abe and Aaron that they are NOT prescient because they might know the past, to the last point in a basketball game, but they have no control over their future selves who might do whatever they think is fit.

Q2: Fail-safe, who built this machine? Why?

Clearly, Abe built the first Failsafe. While building a machine, knowing what the machine was doing, he built two machines and turned one on before Monday. Probably Sunday late night. Now, he has the ability to go back to Sunday late night and not tell anyone about anything, if he so wishes by taking care of his double. He would have to kill him / incapicitate him, so as to take control of his character.

Although, by all accounts, Aaron used the machine before Abe had the chance to. This is the debt that Aaron owes Abe (I think), that the narrator alludes to “Now, I have repaid any debt I may have owed you”

Q3: What is the exact sequence of events?

I have tried to answer this for the first part of the movie and that part is very clear to me now. There are a new set of questions though:

1. How does Aaron find out about the failsafe? Why did he go to the storage facility and look at the manifest without Abe being with him? Did he go there so he could build his own failsafe and put it in another room, just as Abe did and happened to notice the two rooms registered to Abe?

2. When does Aaron use the failsafe? Does he use it on Tuesday night?