Arrival (2016)

[AniNate]

I think I need a lot of time to process this movie

[filmlover]

This movie has stayed with me ever since seeing it. So beautiful.

[IndustriousAngel]

8/10, A (might come up to a 9/10, have to watch it again)

A more than decent SF film which goes for the intellectual approach and ideas instead of explosions and guns, and gets quite emotional in some scenes without becoming silly. Actually, there was one explosion, which was not necessary - the reason behind it was probably to raise the tension but I thought the human/alien meetings were strong and strange enough to do without additional scares. The communications by glyphs was a good idea for a visual medium.

 

The military angle of the operation was rather cliché, and I didn't understand why they didn't use the good old field telephone instead of radios when faced with communications problems.

 

I really liked the spaceship design, especially how they took the very UFO-like lens shape and played with our viewing habits by simple turning it by 90° - cute "twist".

 

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2016 by IndustriousAngel

[La Binoche]

If she can see the future and what's already happened, why is she scrambling to make sure that it does happen? It's going to happen regardless. 

 

I also don't like how it opens with her being so depressed at work and with her mom on the phone when she's never had a daughter. She behaves like someone who's lost a child. Major audience manipulation right there. 

Still really liked it but hardly airtight plotting. 

[MikeQ]

8 hours ago, La Binoche said:

If she can see the future and what's already happened, why is she scrambling to make sure that it does happen? It's going to happen regardless. 

 

It's hard to remove ourselves from a non-linear conception of time, but the film puts forth the very idea that it is not going to happen regardless, as the movie sets up time as a dimension that is both non-linear and not immutable. Louise is seeing time in a non-linear fashion - nothing is happening "first".  Time in this case becomes viewable and something we can move around in, similar to the way we can freely move around in space. Louise is able to do this through linguistic relativity, the gift of the heptapods' language and the way this has changed her perception of time. We get more evidence of the non-linearity of time when Louise is able to use a conversation about zero sum games in the "present" in order to help her daughter with her homework in the "future". But once someone can traverse time, once it is a non-linear dimension, what we call the "present" is really just one moment in time among many.

 

The non-immutability of time seems particularly evident in that the heptapods are on Earth, and their ability to give their language to humanity as a gift is something that is very high stakes for them. The idea that time is not deterministic is something that I really like about the film.

 

I think this idea is also epitomized in one of my favourite elements of the film: that Louise makes the choice to have a child with Ian even though she knows her daughter will die an early death. She chooses this, knowing how that will end, but also knowing that she will have many beautiful, happy, loving moments with her daughter and Ian, moments of time or experiences that she wouldn't have had if she had chosen otherwise. Above all else, I find this aspect of the film uplifting, as it suggests that we can choose to live fully all of the moments of our lives.

 

Quote

 

I also don't like how it opens with her being so depressed at work and with her mom on the phone when she's never had a daughter. She behaves like someone who's lost a child. Major audience manipulation right there. 

Still really liked it but hardly airtight plotting. 

 

 

Absolutely, we're made to understand this as being the case because her daughter has already died, that what we are seeing are "flashbacks" to the past. Earlier Panda essentially made the point that the film is purposefully structured in this way in order to demonstrate assumptions that we make based on pre-existing ideas about how films communicate to us as viewers. The film seems initially to follow the usual trope of using flashbacks in order to situate a character, and then we slowly realize that this isn't how it is at all. 

 

I have to agree with Panda that this film is more about communication, and ultimately about the choices that we make. The ideas of linguistic relativity and the non-linearity of time are tools to help further these themes. The film is light on explication, and I think that is a smart thing.

 

Edited November 30, 2016 by MikeQ

[Blankments]

I had to explain to my parents that the ending isn't Louise having a second child with Renner; it's that Hannah was the child all along

 

LOL guess the movie didn't spell it out enough for them

[4815162342]

Louise deciding to go ahead with the child and apparently still not tell Renner about the illness was a supreme dick move on her part.

[AniNate]

I don't think having the child was a dick move, but I don't think she should've told him about the illness at all before it happened.

 

But I believe part of the movie's message is everyone does stupid things, and they can still lead to great experiences.

[Goffe]

I really really liked movie, in fact it's top 3 of the year, but did anyone got annoyed every time Adams had a flashback? got distracting really quickly, there were way too many of them.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Goffe

[La Binoche]

1 hour ago, Blankments said:

I had to explain to my parents that the ending isn't Louise having a second child with Renner; it's that Hannah was the child all along

 

LOL guess the movie didn't spell it out enough for them

I had to do the same except not to my parents. 

[Goffe]

10 hours ago, La Binoche said:

I also don't like how it opens with her being so depressed at work and with her mom on the phone when she's never had a daughter. She behaves like someone who's lost a child. Major audience manipulation right there. 

 

She behaved like someone who lived alone, hadn't been in an intimate relationship with anyone for way too long. She emotionless watching tv in a darkened room and long quiet shots of her sleeping alone in her bed and the bleak the atmosphere in her house was supposed to convey that. There is a moment in the film where she says to Renner that despite being an expert in languages she doesn't seem to be able to truly talk/communicate/engage with people and how she is alone because of that, or something along those lines.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Goffe

[4815162342]

1 hour ago, tribefan695 said:

I don't think having the child was a dick move, but I don't think she should've told him about the illness at all before it happened.

 

But I believe part of the movie's message is everyone does stupid things, and they can still lead to great experiences.

 

I'm guessing there's a typo there. Because not telling Renner what she knows, knowing how he reacts in the future to not being told (and the pain it causes both her and her child), is completely selfish and wrong.

[AniNate]

What I meant was she should've just let him find out naturally when her daughter started showing symptoms. She shouldn't have claimed to have ever known about it in advance. (I assume the daughter isn't sick yet when she tells him because she dies as a mature teen and is about 6-7 in that scene)

[IronJimbo]

Great movie

Loved the soundtrack also.

Looking forward to blade runner this director is a god!

[MikeQ]

4 hours ago, 4815162342 said:

 

I'm guessing there's a typo there. Because not telling Renner what she knows, knowing how he reacts in the future to not being told (and the pain it causes both her and her child), is completely selfish and wrong.

 

That is certainly one way of looking at it. I was personally left with much to reflect on. Another way of looking at it is that Louise is able to choose her future and is thus empowered with free will. And she chooses to still have a child, knowing that this child will die young, but that this will also create much joy - the joy that is imbued in the love we create with others and in the very experience of humanity.

 

What does it really mean to weigh the pain of death and the joy of loved ones? Because here Louise knows it - she is living it, all of those moments in time. Perhaps she knows and feels the joy of having a daughter and a family with Ian just as much as she does the pain. For Louise time is no longer linear - the past, present and future are just different moments in time. 

 

The screenwriter has said he wanted to establish that Louise finds it more and more difficult to keep up with herself and to separate the past, present and future. This is evident when she is experiencing a moment with Hannah and Louise asks her, "what day is it?". Imagine not really knowing anymore what is past, present and future - but that time is just existence. The very narrative structure of the film emphasizes this non-linearity of time. The way we see Louise near the end of the film, her back to the camera, as she speaks to Ian and asks him "if you could see your whole life laid out in front of you, would you change things?", the realization of what is actually going on lingers; it left me feeling many things and had me wondering what this must be like for Louise.

 

For the rest of us, it is probably easier to imagine the pain of death than to imagine the joy that will come from someone you haven't met yet. Does one not have a child because they may suffer or they will die? Does Louise never have a child because this child will die young? 

 

If she had stopped Ian and they didn't have a child together, would this mean their future together would be better than it would have been? Would they have had any future together? Would their lives independently have been better? When Ian asks Louise "do you want to make a baby", in the moment, Louise says "yes".

 

She chooses, perhaps, to celebrate the value of human life, and of living life, knowing what this means. The film, for me, makes the case for choice and for living with our choices.

 

Peace,

Mike

 

Edited December 1, 2016 by MikeQ

[4815162342]

6 hours ago, MikeQ said:

 

That is certainly one way of looking at it. I was personally left with much to reflect on. Another way of looking at it is that Louise is able to choose her future and is thus empowered with free will. And she chooses to still have a child, knowing that this child will die young, but that this will also create much joy - the joy that is imbued in the love we create with others and in the very experience of humanity.

 

 

Except she also knowingly and deliberately chooses for Ian as well, knowing how he will react in the future. She also essentially chooses for her daughter as well, picking the exact same course of events, even though acting in any other manner could potentially have resulted in a happier situation for all. It's a supremely selfish move where she puts her own personal measurement of pain and joy over everyone else her choices affect.

 

It doesn't affect the quality of the movie, but it certainly skews the character.

[AniNate]

30 minutes ago, 4815162342 said:

 

Except she also knowingly and deliberately chooses for Ian as well, knowing how he will react in the future. She also essentially chooses for her daughter as well, picking the exact same course of events, even though acting in any other manner could potentially have resulted in a happier situation for all. It's a supremely selfish move where she puts her own personal measurement of pain and joy over everyone else her choices affect.

 

It doesn't affect the quality of the movie, but it certainly skews the character.

Well, that pretty much goes with the territory of omniscience. Sometimes you'd have to make decisions that have adverse effects. They didn't depict it explicitly in this movie but usually the moral with these kinds of scenarios is you risk bringing on even worse consequences if you try to change things. For starters not having a child at all robs her daughter of the sixteen or so healthy years she does have where she could spread positivity, and I imagine even if Ian decided he couldn't be with her anymore he probably came around to forgiving Louise for the decision she made.

Edited December 1, 2016 by tribefan695

[4815162342]

6 minutes ago, tribefan695 said:

Well, that pretty much goes with the territory of omniscience. Sometimes you'd have to make decisions that have adverse effects. They didn't depict it explicitly in this movie but usually the moral with these kinds of scenarios is you risk bringing on even worse consequences if you try to change things. For starters not having a child at all robs her daughter of the sixteen or so healthy years she does have where she could spread positivity, and I imagine even if Ian decided he couldn't be with her anymore he probably came around to forgiving Louise for the decision she made.

 

They didn't depict anything in connection with that at all, explicitly or implicitly.

 

It all comes down to a very simple question: If you know something of importance that will affect another person's life, based on a choice that you and that person jointly made, and that by speaking or staying silent you essentially control that part of a person's life as they will make the same choice out of ignorance, whereas you would make it with full knowledge of the consequences, is there a moral obligation to tell that person, so they can make the choice based on their own judgment, rather than you making the choice for them?

 

I think there is. Louise clearly felt differently.

[AniNate]

Whatever choice she made she ran the risk of hurting someone. If she tells Ian before they conceive, he could decide to break it off and their daughter is never born or he goes through with it under the pressure of not wanting to be a murderer and eventually comes to resent Louise and her daughter anyway, still nullifying the five years of a happy family life they have. I don't see how they can all win by Louise telling him earlier.

Edited December 1, 2016 by tribefan695

[4815162342]

6 minutes ago, tribefan695 said:

Whatever choice she made she ran the risk of hurting someone. If she tells Ian before they conceive, he could decide to break it off and their daughter is never born or he goes through with it under the pressure of not wanting to be a murderer and eventually comes to resent Louise and her daughter anyway, still nullifying the five years of a happy family life they have. I don't see how they can all win by Louise telling him earlier.

 

It's not about whether they all win, it's whether you think the other person has the right to know something of that magnitude about how their life will turn out.