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So it works on either level no matter how people pronounce it.

Carruth: Yes. It's so deep, isn't it? (Laughing)

Speaking of deep, I was glad to see that other critics were scratching their head after the film. Is that aggravating for you, or do you want people to walk away saying, "Huh?"

Carruth: It's only aggravating if they write it off, if they say it's not able to be understood or that I'm purposely complicating it. I actually read something that said I had made it purposely complicated to get more box office dollars—as if when I was writing the script I was thinking about theatrical release. But no.

My favorite films are the ones where I can get at least the first inkling of what it's thematically about, but it gives me something to puzzle over—and if I see it again, I realize there's more information in there. I would be frustrated if somebody watched Primer and thought there was nothing going on subtextually, that it's just trying to be complicated and it's a time travel enigma story. But now I've just talked myself into a corner. I'm not sure …

Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth) and their little experiment

I hear ya. I hate movies that don't make you think at all, where everything is spelled out. But then, I don't want to leave the theater in a total state of confusion either. Is there a happy medium, and what is the filmmaker's responsibility for communicating clearly?

Carruth: That's just what I've been puzzling over for a while. I first got interested in writing this script while I was in college, when I had some kind of weird awakening. The Great Gatsby [book, film] was always such a great template to study, as far as irony and symbolism and subtext. My professors would go on and on about all the color symbolism of the oranges at the parties. I'm like, Man, oranges are oranges. I just felt like too much is being read into this. I thought, Did Fitzgerald ever own up to what everything was about? Or should he have?

To answer your question, when it comes to the plot, as an author or filmmaker, I have a responsibility to make sure the information is in there. Even if I'm talking "in code," my first sentences need to be an example of how the code works so you can apply it to the rest of what I'm saying. We need a cipher. That was my hope for this film—to make sure the information is in there, and I will walk you through enough to show that I have done the homework. And if you want to figure out the rest of these details, then by all means that information is in there, and here's the key code of how to unlock them.

I know I could have written a scene with an emotional breakdown of some character, and then explain what happened. But that seemed counterproductive. I'm hoping the audience is right there with Abe and Aaron as they're going through this thing, and it felt insulting to say, right at the end, "Here's what you've just seen."

OK, so what do you want people to walk away with? The general message I got is, if you start messing with destiny, you're really going to screw things up. But what beyond that?

Carruth: It's more than just a science fiction movie. It's about trust, and how that trust is dependent on what's at risk. The main characters who have a conventional relationship at the beginning, but the relationship changes with the introduction of this device and its power. It unravels the relationship. Not that either of them is necessarily a good or a bad person, but because there's too much to trust somebody else with.

I'm getting older, and I have to find a way to understand some of these things. There are people that are doing bad things, but they're not going home and thinking they're a bad person. They found a way—we all do—to rationalize what they've done. One of the ways we do that is by being very protective of our situations. I think that's what leads people to do things that they probably wouldn't be doing otherwise. And so this is my attempt to understand that and explore that a little bit.

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