Seite - 27 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 06/01
Bild der Seite - 27 -
Text der Seite - 27 -
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
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Band 06/01
- Titel
- JRFM
- Untertitel
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Band
- 06/01
- Autoren
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Herausgeber
- Uni-Graz
- Verlag
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Ort
- Graz
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Seiten
- 184
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften JRFM