Arrival (2016) is an extremely thought-provoking film. Now that many have seen the it, I thought it might be a good idea to analyze and discuss the film. I am interested to know everyone's thoughts and theories on the film.
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Yes. It is an extremely thought-provoking film and it's timing couldn't be more perfect, but I simply didn't love it. I believe the delivery of the payload left me feeling underwhelmed and overall unsatisfied.
So, the whole point to these aliens being here was to teach us to communicate better and work towards a goal that would eventually save these aliens 3000 years in the future? One thing that was unclear for me was the fact that Louise Banks had this gift for which she could see the future (which we all thought were flashbacks, by the way). Did these aliens give her that ability? Or is it something she already had? If so how did she develop it? Or, because time is "circular", she was able to see...
Ah screw it.
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I was confused by this also, but I'm pretty sure it's the idea that because the she had the patience to figure out what they were trying to say, they bestowed her with the ability to see time non-linearly, which is how she saw the flashes forward towards the beginning of the movie; the aliens giving her the ability was sort of the beginning and her seeing snippets of her daughter was sort of a flashback within a flashback, if that even makes sense.
I had another Theory that's way simpler, and that's that she had the ability all along and the aliens showed her how to use/know/ understand it as their gift. I really dunno.
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I was confused by this also, but I'm pretty sure it's the idea that because the she had the patience to figure out what they were trying to say, they bestowed her with the ability to see time non-linearly, which is how she saw the flashes forward towards the beginning of the movie; the aliens giving her the ability was sort of the beginning and her seeing snippets of her daughter was sort of a flashback within a flashback, if that even makes sense.
I had another Theory that's way simpler, and that's that she had the ability all along and the aliens showed her how to use/know/ understand it as their gift. I really dunno.
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My impression was that the brief mention in the movie about how learning a new language can actually re-wire your brain (the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, although that term is not explicit in the dialogue) is key to understanding the movie. During the course of the film Louise organizes pictures in her computer of the smoke symbols the aliens make during her regular interactions with them (or maybe they are ink, not smoke; the aliens look quite a bit like our cephalopods), creating a translation dictionary, which she then uses to communicate with the aliens. As she learns the alien language, she has visions of a little girl and a teenager and these appear to be memories of her dead daughter. But at one point she asks "Who is this child?" She also dreams about the aliens. Although she also has visions of the child at the beginning of the film, before her (apparently) first contact with the aliens, it is clear at the end of the movie that the earliest scenes we see are really after the contact. The aliens ("Pentopods") apparently do not perceive time as we do - I may be projecting here, but it seems to me that they experience all times simultaneously and can freely move from one time stream to another - this is what allows them to know, and tell Louise, that they are giving a valuable gift to humans now so that 3000 years in the future when the Pentapods desperately need help from us, we will provide it. By learning the Pentopods' language, Louise's brain is changed so she can experience time as the Pentopods do, moving from present to future and past. By using this awakened ability she is able to stop the Chinese from attacking one of the alien ships, even though the twelve countries where the alien ships are have shut down all contact with one another. Louise also writes a textbook to teach other people how to "speak" Pentapod, the learning of which will presumably have the same effect on other humans that it has had on herself. I liked this movie very much.
