SPACE AND TIME TAKE TOP BILLING IN 'PRIMER'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

'PRIMER'' IS a singular creation, for good and bad. Belonging to that select group of films in which a physics degree would improve the movie-going experience, Shane Carruth's willfully impenetrable examination of trust, time travel and metaphysics takes no prisoners and holds no hands. This is a movie for science nerds and obsessive film lovers who live for films that require repeat viewings in order to decode their meanings.

Admittedly, that's not a lot of people. And whether ``Primer'' really invites, much less warrants, multiple examinations is debatable. Carruth's pretzel-logic head-scratcher, shot on a shoestring budget in Super 16 and rewarded at Sundance with the Grand Jury Award, is spot-on in its techno-jargon and possesses a claustrophobic narrative tension. Carruth, not surprisingly, is an egghead himself, a former engineer with a degree in mathematics. He knows the lay of the land.

But once you move beyond the film's rigorous braininess and authentic feel, you stumble into a thicket of overlapping dialogue, jump cuts and an unwillingness on the part of Carruth to at least leave a trail of bread crumbs behind him. Brain-twisters like ``Mulholland Drive'' and ``Memento'' are fun. Defiantly obtuse, ``Primer'' just makes your head hurt.

The movie is about a couple of guys, Aaron (Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), who hold down white-collar techie jobs by day and then come home, venture into the garage and try to come up with an invention that will change the world and, more important, make them a pile of money.

And stumble onto something they do, a device that, like Michael J.Fox's DeLorean in ``Back to the Future,'' can take them to another point in time. Six hours back, to be precise. Abe and Aaron initially decide the best use for their invention is to make a killing in the stock market. But complications arise: Multiple Aarons and Abes don't want to go quietly into the night, giving rise to paranoia, godlike musings and the ultimate question of the universe - can a cell phone ring in two places at once?

The answer to every question Carruth poses is: I don't know. That's my answer, at least. If Carruth has any explanations, he's not sharing, at least not in ``Primer.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

PRIMER - Two stars

(PG-13: brief language)

Starring: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan.

Director: Shane Carruth.

Running time: 1 hr. 17 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Rigorously brainy movie that gets its kicks from making your head hurt.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

David Sullivan, left, and Shane Carruth invent a time machine that unlocks a host of metaphysical dilemmas in 'Primer.'