Movie #24 Arrival

[Dee]

Arrival is a 2016 American science fiction drama film directed by Denis Villeneuve and adapted by Eric Heisserer, who conceived the project as a spec script based on the 1998 short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. The film stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks, a linguist enlisted by the United States Army to discover how to communicate with extraterrestrial aliens who have arrived on Earth, before tensions lead to war.

(from Wikipedia)

[Dee]

But that is just one (and probably not the best) way to introduce this wonderful film that is so much more than a how-to-save-the-planet movie. Its multiple layers are what makes this film so unique. Because the film is also about the exploration of motherhood, communication, time, fear and trust, free will and choices, and the relationship between language and our perception of the world. As most good science fiction, this film provides a fresh perspective to explore what it means to be human.

[Dee]

Only proceed from here after you’ve watched the film!

[Dee]

Things I loved about the film, in random order:

The cinematography- the mystery and slow revelation of the alien space pod, the fog over the valley.

The depiction of Louise’s fear and wonder.

The heartbreaking snapshots of the incredible highs and devastating lows of motherhood.

Louise’s choice.

(And yes, I do believe she had a choice: More on this later.)

Louise and Ian’s amazing minds.

The music/soundtrack - just brilliant.

The stunning way the Heptapods communicated. Such spellbinding way to write.

Circles circles circles

Humans forced to work together.

The challenge of perceiving time in a different - and much more exciting - way.

The beautiful mindfulness of the "universal language" Louise learns to understand.

The little instalments of language analysis and progress in communication. (I’d have loved to see much more of that, actually. Happily have sat through an extra hour of the film giving us more on the development of communication between the Heptapods and our humans.)

And now some starter questions for you all! Take your pick or answer them all?

[Dee]

What did you enjoy in the film? What aspects have interested you the most?

[Dee]

What did you make of Louise’s choice?

Did she even have a choice?

If so, what was the actual choice?

[Dee]

Why did Louise not tell Ian about what she’s discovered about Hannah from the flash forwards?

Should she have told him?

[Dee]

Would having glimpses of our future be a bad thing? Would knowing detract from the experience?

What is more important: the stations we visit or the journey in between?

[Dee]

Do you think humanity will ever be able to fully cooperate?

[Dee]

What scene/image/idea from the film do you think will stay with you?

[Dee]

Would having glimpses of our future be a bad thing? Would knowing detract from the experience?

What is more important: the stations we visit or the journey in between?

For me, this is probably the most interesting question raised by the film.

It's the: what or the how? The destination or the journey?

I'm putting my vote down here firmly on the HOW and the JOURNEY.

So many things in life we do, we do knowing the result beforehand. We cook meals we have cooked before, we know what it's going to be like. We have cleaned, mowed the lawn, exercised, made love before... we know exactly what to expect, yet we do these things and suchlike again and again. Either because we have to, or because we enjoy the process. Mindfulness also teaches us to find joy even in the "mundane" daily routines. So it's not the what, it's the how that matters, right?

A lot of humans enjoy jigsaw puzzles. It's not like we are going into the unknown. We know exactly what our final picture is going to look like. We are recreating it. Yet, it's a satisfying process, engaging with the details (mindfulness) and creating order from chaos with an element of control we don't normally have in our everyday existence. So it's all about the process, not the end result. It's not just completing the puzzle that is satisfying, but all the stages inbetween: finding the edge pieces, constructing the frame, focusing on parts of the picture, studying the individual pieces, the feel of them in our hands, noticing things we haven't before, finally finding a piece that's been eluding us for a long time... all the reasons why we enjoy doing the puzzles the first place. Not because we want to see the end result. That was on the cover of the box the whole time.

And it's not just puzzles. We rewatch films, reread books, revisit places we love. We know. Yet we want to delve in again.

Isn't life like that for the Heptapods and Louise in many ways?

So I don't think knowing the end detracts. It's not something we can do with our human lives to the extent we can do with a jigsaw puzzle. But in many ways, we know that Everything Around Us is transient, and we know that within that our lives are finite too.

And just one more thought, in the context of the film. I don't think knowing the future means every little detail. I think it means glimpses. Just how our memory works. Sensing the essence.

[Dee]

What did you make of Louise’s choice?

Did she even have a choice?

If so, what was the actual choice?

This is the second most interesting bunch of questions for me. I've found out from an interview with the screen writer, that apparently the original short story suggests Louise has no choice about having Hannah, the future is set, she needs to accept that. The screen writer wanted her to have a choice, and her choice to accept the future echoes as her path. I'm not sure that his distinction has been particularly clear in the film at all, hence it's one of the most urgent questions people would ask having seen the film. (Note to self: should read the original short story at some point.)

I'd say, the film, just like the short story, suggests she didn't have a choice in having Hannah. If they wanted us to think she had a choice about Hannah, we'd have had glimpses of different possibilities in Louise's future, but we didn't. From the future echoes there was only one possible story manifesting, and that was Hannah's EXISTENCE: her birth, happy childhood, her creativity, her sadness over Daddy leaving, and then the illness and her tragic death.

Yet, Louise had a choice: whether to rebel against this, feel bitter about it, resent it, even try to change it knowing that it was most likely a futile attempt. Or accept it. Intelligent as she was, she knew she had to accept it. So the real choice was whether she'd accept it with resentment and bitterness, or whether she'd embrace it, the good with the bad. And Louise decided to embrace it all, and that's her actual choice, and a truly beautiful choice too. That's my take on it anyways.

What do you think?