Page - 27 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

wanted it to be right on that line […] The audience never knows more than Abe and Aaron know … But “Primer” is airtight; the information is in there. No one’s shown me a hole yet. People who decide to see it a second time, a third, fourth, fifth time […] they tell me it’s a different experience.33 In Ricoeur’s hermeneutical circle, he proposes a dialectic between “guessing” and “validating” where one intuits a proposed interpretation of a text – a guess based in probability – then seeks validation of the interpretation within the world of the text itself. Primer prompts exactly this response within its audience, as if by entering the film-world they too have entered a box of the parabolic: “the box” is a met- aphorical hermeneutical circle. In their early experimentation, Abe says to Aaron, “When you were controlling the feeds, did you notice the parabolic? Hey, it’s impor- tant. Parabolas are important.”34 Indeed, Primer is parabolic in both senses of the word, via its ever-curving cul-de-sac of emplotment as well as a narrative-metaphor evoking a limit-experience in its audience. As Carruth says (and personal experience affirms), repeat viewings of the film generate different experiences and interpreta- tions, which is precisely the Ricoeurian “endless spiral” of interpretation within the hermeneutical modes of mimesis.35 33 Shulman 2004. 34 Primer (US 2004), 00:23:44–00:23:49. 35 Ricoeur 1984, 72. Fig. 3: Multiple timelines. Film still, Primer (Shane Carruth, US 2004), © ERBP Film, 01:14:04. 26 | Joel Mayward www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 17–36