11 Minutes Ago Recommended and Explained

11 Minutes Ago Recommended and Explained. Sorry to say going into this movie recommendation, this movie is impossible to get a hold of. I might know of one tentative way of finding it. And, if you are complimentary enough in the comments, I might subtly point in the right direction. But at this point, 11 Minutes Ago isn’t on Prime anymore, and I’m not seeing it on the calendar for any of the big streamers. I even reached out to the director and several of the actors in order to see how we could get this out to a wider audience. Nothing yet. So, either give me a yell on the downlow, and I’ll see what I can do, or wait until the bigger streaming distribution network picks it back up again. (This is one big massive flaw in the post DVD, post Blockbuster world… but I digress.)

So, your challenge – if you choose to accept it – is to first, find the movie 11 Minutes Ago. The challenge immediately after finding said movie… is to figure out what the heck was going on throughout its slight 84-minute duration.

The Timeline of 11 Minutes Ago

Before we even begin to think about talking about 11 Minutes Ago, we have GOT to talk about the timeline. 11 Minutes Ago is a time travel movie with a timeline that is ALMOST as convoluted as Shane Carruth’s Primer. But I have faith in you. You’ve got this. So let’s see if I can craft a simple diagram that will definitely make your confusion infinitely worse… here we go:

Okay, a few things to note about this here deranged madness is 1) I apparently have too much time on my hands and 2) There is obviously no diagram on God’s gloriously green earth that will “help” the chronology of this movie. Not in the least.

The simplest thing to realize about the movie, is that it is that Pack travels backwards in blocks of 15 minutes, but he only stays for 11 minutes in order to keep from meeting himself. You know, 4 minute buffer? Right. (But, that’s BS, we’ll get to that in a bit. Bear with me.) Another couple ideas of note here. The future is set in something like 2049 (based on a wedding date of 2007 – which is when the movie was released), wherein the air quality of the world goes to pot, and also, simultaneously, fertility also, takes a nosedive. Six years worth of work, and in 2060, Pack makes his first jump. And the other thing to note? Pack, somehow, mucks up the order of the 15 minute increments. The last 15 minute block for Pack is first. But something happened in his first time there (chronologically) that he has to figure out. Right? He did something, during his LAST time in 2007, that he has to find out more about. So he continues jumping in an effort to sort it all out.

11 Minutes Ago Detailed Walk Through

These are my unedited notes while watching the movie the first time. And I’ll add a few revelations at the end once the entirety of the movie ended and revealed itself. But for now, let’s just go, tumble by tumble, 11 minute block by 11 minute block…

TRIP NUMBER ONE – 8:45-8:56

1. “Give back the video camera.” Eh? One of the first things said to him and I think it’s really important for some reason.
2. It took Pack five years of solid work to be able to tumble back in time.
3. Why did he come? He needed a clean air sample to replicate in his air processors.
4. Why? Because the air is tanking birth rates…
5. But, at the same time, he also finds out that later, he would be able to create a birth rate bonanza – it worked? No, it WILL work.
6. Why, if I was successful, would I come back to now? So, if he got the air he needed?? Why is he still coming back?
7. “I think you know how I’ll answer your question…??”
8. A woman!

TRIP NUMBER TWO – 8:30-8:41

1. Air is cleaner – but not everything is figured out.
2. Instead of 5 years, it only took him 6 months to get back this time.
3. You’ll get it to 3 months.
4. As I mention above, he travels in quarter hour intervals and only stays for 11 minutes so he doesn’t run into himself.
5. Chronologically, he arrives at 7:00 pm, leaves at 8:56 pm.
6. You need to make certain that I come back, no matter what.
7. “I’m still composing an answer to your question.” This is the obvious reason…
8. Her name is Cynthia Valco?
9. Pack mentions that he promised my wife, before she died, I’d fix things.
10. Libido levels haven’t moved yet.
11. Why 11 minutes? Not exploring past, keeping a promise. He was only interested in solving the air problem and saving humanity.

//////// JUMPS PAST 8:15-8:26 ////////

TRIP NUMBER THREE – 8:00-8:11

1. Bouquet throw in 15.
2. I leapt over it… you say I’m here for all of it.
3. Cynthia – looking up her life – just researched her life up til today.
4. Cynthia tells him that they should meet in the back storage room in 5 minutes…

TRIP NUMBER FOUR – 8:15-8:26

1. Took him 3 months – wrong shirt…
2. Heads to the closet… So, they are, wink wink? That is the question. What are they doing?
3. They have the bouquet toss & garter while we wait.
4. There is a lot of drama between the father of the bride, and bride’s maids. The groom and other women, lot’s of tangled connections.
5. Groom gets step stool in closet?
6. Takes another air sample – 8:25.
7. Groom – it was you??

TRIP NUMBER FIVE – 7:15-7:26

1. Last sample worked, pregnancy rates are skyrocketing.
2. I come back because I’m obsessed with her. (Yes, this is clear.)
3. I know I ask her a question, but can I change it? I know she’ll say yes. (He isn’t sure what the question is that he asks her… and yet the fulfillment of that question already occurred in the previous jump??)
4. He makes a statement here – “I’m going to do something so out of character, I need to do it non-chronologically??” So, is that why it’s out of order? Science/Technical courage?
5. Don’t ever compromise your passion – passion it’s like a haunted house.
6. “If you had one night together, how would you live it?”
7. “What about your question… still working on it.”

TRIP NUMBER SIX – 7:30-7:41

1. So the groom is still in love with Cynthia ?
2. Kelly, the bride, will have 4 kids, and become a stay at home mom.
3. The groom will leave her soon after they are married.
4. Trevor, groomsman, will get the love he’s been pining for all these years.
5. Groom is drinking like crazy – and he doesn’t drink – has he made a mistake?
6. Interesting thought – “How much info can you store realistically?” “You probably only have 10 or 11 minutes of memories about someone.”
7. What if tonight is it for us?
8. Moments are precious and they are just rushing by.
9. 7:40 – kisses her.
10. When you take her home tonight, hold her like it’s the last time you ever do – because, uh, it probably is! hah.
11. (I want my camera) – this is important! haha.

TRIP NUMBER SEVEN – 7:45-7:56

1. Definitely, he was able to initiate a birth rate bonanza.
2. We also learn that he is the first ever time traveler.
3. 7:51 – create a better one.
4. They dance together.
5. He tells Cynthia that he was married, and that now she’s gone.
6. You might be the prime – every other woman I meet will simply be a derivative of you.
7. 7:55 – he has an “idea.”

TRIP NUMBER EIGHT – 7:00-7:11

1. I don’t know what to ask her.
2. Something about animal balloons… gotta say that detail is lost on me.
3. Congratulates the bride’s father – and then he accomplishes the 8 of diamonds card trick.
4. Finally, Pack meets Cynthia for the first time, and he tells her that he is intentionally stopping and exploring.
5. And here we have it – the reason he has been building up, backwards, to this moment, “Will you have dinner with me tonight…?”
6. And we also learn that Pack is the one shooting with the camera with the time stamp in the bottom right throughout the movie.

11 Minutes Ago Explained

So, after reading back through my notes, we can say, at a high level, that in 50 years, society collapses because of a horrible air quality. As a result of the bad air quality, birth rates drastically drop. Libidos fail. We also learn that Pack was married to a woman, and that he promises her that he will solve the world’s problems. Because of that, he creates a time machine to just jump backwards 50 years or so, to snag air and go. But when he does, he realizes that he has already been here… ergo, he will come back earlier chronologically. Though he doesn’t know why he keeps coming back, he has the air sample he needs. Then he realizes he has fallen for Cynthia, and he has jumbled up the timeline in order to build to asking her a question at their initial (chronological) meeting.

There is a lot of other things going on between the groomsmen, their pasts, and their eventual futures. But I’m not going to map those details out as they don’t really matter. Save to say that each moment is fleeting, and you should seize the day each and every moment that you can.

One more detail that I want to cover that I think is really enormous, and was most likely missed by 99% of viewers. Hopefully you caught it though. Throughout the movie, starting with moment 1 of Pack’s arrival in the 8:45-8:56 time window… one of the guys at the party asks for his video camera back. And throughout the movie, Pack keeps getting asked for the video camera… again, and again, and again. At the final (first chronologically) window, we finally see what happened with the camera. We watch as Pack “borrows” the camera, and heads back behind a trellis, hidden away from everyone else. He begins recording, and we see the familiar video with the timestamp at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. So?

Ending of the Movie 11 Minutes Ago Explained

Not to call you a dullard or anything. But I’m going to slow, WAY DOWN, and explain it all to you again at 100,000 foot view. Fifty years into the future, a man decides to go back in time, basically backwards… his first jump is the last segment of time he’s here (chronologically), and his last jump is the first segment of time he is here (chronologically). He comes back, swimming his way backwards in time until he arrives at the 7:00-7:11 window. His 7:00 pm arrival is the farthest backwards in time he will ever go. And now? From then on? He will stay in the 2007 year and move forward with time. He will stay with Cynthia.

WAIT!?? WAHHHT?? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?

I think on first glance, many people will think that this movie is a bit of a downer, that Pack, who has a dead wife, will bounce into 2007, save the world, then head back to the future and live alone… absent his new love. But that isn’t what happens. He borrows the camera, and watches, and documents, his arrival and movement backwards in time, but this time, documenting it forwards. He stops jumping, he didn’t go back at the end of the 7:11 window… what does he do? He slips behind a bush, and starts recording. And because, throughout the movie, we have evidence of a different camera angle, always tucked away, we know that he stayed with Cynthia. And that after his “first” arrival at the end of the night, he will step out from behind his hidden vantage, and will remain. Does that make sense?

With that in mind, in my above diagram, I should draw a line from the 7:00 pm time window, and send it through all the other windows and continue it forward – with a “happily ever after” attached to it. Pack avoided learning about Cynthia’s future… why? Because it would become his own. He’d be looking at what his life with Cynthia would become. See? Would they be happy together? Would they divorce? He didn’t what to know.

Make sense? No? Then start over at the top, and read it again, my dear time traveling friend.

Edited by: CY