What's good. I just got done watching Primer, a movie vetler mentioned in my post 'A few films you may not have heard of that will make you think'. If you've seen this bare-bones budget sci-fi head-scratcher, chances are you were straining so hard to just make sense of the basic plot that you didn't get a moment to take a closer look. If you haven't, consider this fair warning for any potential spoilers. If you're interested in watching Primer, it's available on Netflix online.

One of the major visual themes in this film are boxes. They're placed everywhere throughout the film and often tell stories all on their own. Let's see a few examples.

Here's one of the first major examples, around 8:40 throughout the film. The garage door closes...

Shortly after, we're shown a trucking shot of Aaron and Abe having a conversation through the same windows of the garage door...

Then at 23:40, Aaron and Abe are trapped again...

And then here, at 28:00, we see that the box is dividing Aaron and Abe. A little foreshadowing, perhaps?

At 32:42, Aaron and Abe are enclosed in visual boxes again, but notice a difference--there isn't just one box any longer. Now that a recurring visual theme has been established (boxes), Shane starts to play it up in ways that either foreshadow or visualize the state our two protagonists are in.

While we're on visual themes, how about we sprinkle in a few visual symbols?

Enter the Weebles. Right away at 1:10 we catch a glimpse of the Weeble.

Here at 11:08, Aaron drops the blue Weeble into the box...

Soon after, we are brought to the lab, where Abe has Aaron explained the amount of fungus growth on the Weebles.

There, a scientist tells us: "It is a joke." (when referring to the amount of fungus growth on the Weeble)

Try thinking of this as a potential statement not to Aaron and Abe, but to us, the viewer. If the fungus growth on the Weeble was true, wouldn't it prevent anyone from entering the box? It's possible that since Aaron prime had used the failsafe box to travel backwards at or before the point when the Weeble was placed inside of the box, that Aaron 2 may have planted it there. Aaron prime would be completely surprised by this and would eventually lead Abe to try the box for himself. But what does this 'joke' achieve?

It could be interpreted that Aaron 2 wanted Abe to build his box in a U-Haul center in a climate-controlled storage unit (the privacy was crucial to their success), and might make Abe less inclined to use one in the first place.

Abe must have built a box, long before we admits to Aaron about building one. This might explain how he knows about the oxygen tanks and the static shock upon entering and the timing. However, he deceives Aaron in saying that he had only taken one experimental trip beforehand.

However, this is only one interpretation. That's what's so fun about movies like this, is that everyone sees it differently. As Aaron would say, 'the permutations are endless.'

A few helpful images:

How the time machine in Primer works:

The narrative outline of Primer

qntm.org also has a great write-up on Primer's trail of events, and I highly recommend reading it if you've watched it a few times and are still lost.