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Primer (2004) More at IMDbPro »

There is a very nice summary of what was happening in the article "Primer: The Perils and Paradoxes of Restricted Time Travel Narration." (http://www.nobleworld.biz/images/Gendler.pdf. It is by Jason Gendler, a Masters student in Critical Studies at the University of Californias Department of Film and Television, and was published in the December 2006 journal called Nebula (http://www.nobleworld.biz/journalhome.html).

Gendler describes some of narrative techniques of the film and distinguishes what we see occur on screen, versus what is depicted in narration and montage, and what we must deduce and or speculate.

Furthermore, there is a quite complex and so far unverified interpretation of the movie in the form of a timeline chart at http://www.freeweb.hu/neuwanstein/. According to this interpretation, there are as many as 9 timelines in the story.

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First thing, I saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but ethically, morons. They never had any reasons before to have ethical questions. So when they're hit with this device they're blindsided by it. The first thing they do is make money with it. They're not talking about the ethics of altering your former self. So to me, they're kids, they're like prep school kids basically. To call it a primer or a lesson was the easy way to go. And then there's also this power they have in using the device is something almost worse than death. To put someone else in the position where they're not sure they're in control of anything. They're not in the front of the line anymore and they're living in someone's past, to be secondary in that world. The thing that is most important is to feel like you're at the front of the line, to be prime or primer. I definitely never wanted to say that in the film, but that's where it comes from.

From an interview of Shane Carruth by Wendy Mitchell http://www.indiewire.com/people/people_041008carruth.html

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The voice is Aaron, who has traveled back from the future, speaking to his past self. In an attempt to prevent Abe from re-writing history so that he, Aaron, will never learn of the time machine, Aaron travels back to that same morning and incapacitates his past self, locking him(self) in the attic (his wife believes the noise coming from there is rats; Aaron advises against spraying for them, pretending it's because the noise could be baby birds). He then encounters an even later iteration of himself from further in the future; who fails to incapacitate the second iteration. Despite this, the second Aaron allows his third self to proceed with the meeting with Abe, so Abe cannot undo the events to come. Later, he phones his past self to explain what he did and why he did it, feeling he owes himself at least that much.

According to the director, the audience doesn't know. There is no information in the film that would answer this question conclusively. This is intentional, since the audience is watching from Abe's perspective, and Abe himself doesn't know. Abe can only speculate why either himself or Aaron would mention the time machine to Granger in the future, and why Granger would want to come back. This uncertainty and paranoia is what drives Abe to use the failsafe to go back and perhaps not mention the time machine to Aaron the second time around, to prevent the Granger incident from happening.

There is some hint at the end of the film that Granger's daughter might have been shot by her ex, and either Abe or Aaron told him about the machine to allow him to go back and save her. This is how Mr Granger is able to be following them at night later on in the film, yet also be at home in bed to answer their phone call - at the same point in time.