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"Arrival" the movie (1 Viewer)

I've been pondering a post-Arrival choice Amy didn't make but each citizen can make. Would you study the gift-language in the hopes of re-wiring and 'knowing'?  Tragedy, euphoria, all of it.  I would.  Would you? 

 
bostonfred said:
I used to think this was the beginning of your story. Memory is a strange thing.  It doesn't work like I thought it did. We are so bound by time, by its order. 

Whispering to her newborn: Come back to me.  Come back to me. Come back to me. 

I remember moments in the middle

(Hannah says I love you! Then later... I hate you!) 

And this was the end.  

Louise (crying over Hannah's bed) Come back to me.  Come back to me.  

But now I'm not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings.  There are days that define your story beyond your life. Like the day they arrived.  
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Exactly.  This was much clearer on the second viewing.  

 
1) Does General Shang speak heptapod? In the flash forward scene where Louise meets General Shang at the gala he gives her his personal phone number. I can't remember the exact dialog but the inference is that he KNEW he needed to do so in order for things to turn out as they did.

2) Starting the movie with the scene with Louise and her daughter seems unnecessary in hind sight and only put in to force you to think that everything that happened with her daughter was in the past. I think the flash backs should have coincided with the moments when she started to get a grasp of the heptapod's language. If they had done it that way I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have figured out the flash backs were a result of her brain being rewired and her ability to experience time non linearly. It wouldn't have taken away from the "Ah Ha!" moment. Of course the counter argument to that would be that I'm thinking linearly and that's not the way things work with Louise.

3) The rouge American soldiers planting the bomb was dumb and unnecessary. 

1 no, but a year and a half after the event, he knows that she can. They're at a gala celebrating her book among other things.  She's seeing her future in which he had seen what she already did.  He specifically says I don't claim to know how your mind works, but...  here's some information that will end the movie

2 yeah part of the reason they started it that way was to trick you, but it was actually a great story telling tool because of the quote that starts the movie

I used to think this was the beginning of your story. Memory is a strange thing.  It doesn't work like I thought it did. We are so bound by time, by its order. 

Whispering to her newborn: Come back to me.  Come back to me. Come back to me. 

I remember moments in the middle

(Hannah says I love you! Then later... I hate you!) 

And this was the end.  

Louise (crying over Hannah's bed) Come back to me.  Come back to me.  

But now I'm not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings.  There are days that define your story beyond your life. Like the day they arrived.  

3 yeah there's always a thing like that in these movies. It's hard because there's a big theological component to first contact and that matters to a lot of people, but it's hard to make it interesting in Hollywood so the easy way out is to make it into a conflict. In this case they needed a reason to push things along like oh no the aliens are leaving because we did this.  But it was also interesting in that the aliens knew it was going to happen, and protected Louise and Ian, even though it may have killed Costello.  Not my favorite plot point but you could read the Bible and say it was great until they killed Jesus, I mean, who would do that?  But it turns out its kind of a big deal to the whole story. 

@Buzzbait

@TripItUp
 
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oso diablo said:
decided this is my pick for Best Picture

caveat: only seen 4 of the nominees
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Mine too and I've also seen four of the nominees. In order I think mine are:

Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures and Hell or High Water

No shame in being #4 as I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

 
BTW it was very hard for me to handle this movie emotionally as I asked myself that very question many times over this last year. 

 
The Gator said:
Finally saw it a second time

Even better :thumbup:
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Interesting to hear.  I've seen it once, and kind of felt like it might not be a good second viewing because the pace of it seemed kind of slow. Not so slow it bothered me while I was trying to figure things out. But knowing how it goes now, I thought it might drag a bit on additional viewings.

 
Watched the movie last night. Very well made and well acted but as TLEF316 said it is a bit slow. The pace made it difficult for me to remain engaged. I'm also not sure why Adams reciting the Chinese leader's dead wife's final words would result in an entire world pulling back on attacking the aliens. That seemed like a bit of a streeeeeeeeetch. Also, was the entire point of the aliens' arriving just so Adams could hook up with Jeremy Renner? I'm not really sure what the point of their "arrival" really was.    

 
packersfan said:
Watched the movie last night. Very well made and well acted but as TLEF316 said it is a bit slow. The pace made it difficult for me to remain engaged. I'm also not sure why Adams reciting the Chinese leader's dead wife's final words would result in an entire world pulling back on attacking the aliens. That seemed like a bit of a streeeeeeeeetch. Also, was the entire point of the aliens' arriving just so Adams could hook up with Jeremy Renner? I'm not really sure what the point of their "arrival" really was.    
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Their point of arriving was they needed humanities help in 3000 years. So they arrived to give the humans a gift. A gift of world peace. Which they gave by teaching her the ability to learn their language. 

 
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packersfan said:
Watched the movie last night. Very well made and well acted but as TLEF316 said it is a bit slow. The pace made it difficult for me to remain engaged. I'm also not sure why Adams reciting the Chinese leader's dead wife's final words would result in an entire world pulling back on attacking the aliens. That seemed like a bit of a streeeeeeeeetch. Also, was the entire point of the aliens' arriving just so Adams could hook up with Jeremy Renner? I'm not really sure what the point of their "arrival" really was.    
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My recollection is that it was the Chinese who were about to attack the aliens, not an entire world. 

The point of their arrival was to bring about world peace so we could survive 3000 years to save the aliens when they need us. 

 
shadyridr said:
Their point of arriving was they needed humanities help in 3000 years. So they arrived to give the humans a gift. A gift of world peace. Which they gave by teaching her the ability to learn their language. 
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Seems like a big gamble that Amy Adams learning their language is going to help them 3,000 years down the road, not to mention just her learning the language preventing the attack at the end. Again, I thought the movie was well made and well acted (Adams, Renner and Whitaker are always money) but the aliens' motivation and the Chinese bit at the end were not well developed in my opinion. 

 
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bigbottom said:
My recollection is that it was the Chinese who were about to attack the aliens, not an entire world. 

The point of their arrival was to bring about world peace so we could survive 3000 years to save the aliens when they need us. 
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Didn't they have other countries, including Russia, following suit? 

ETA - I shouldn't call it a global attack although it stands to reason things would've escalated quickly. 

 
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packersfan said:
Seems like a big gamble that Amy Adams learning their language is going to help them 3,000 years down the road, not to mention just her learning the language preventing the global attack at the end. Again, I thought the movie was well made and well acted (Adams, Renner and Whitaker are always money) but the aliens' motivation and the Chinese bit at the end were not well developed in my opinion. 
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Learning the language essentially gave her the ability to see the future. 

 
shadyridr said:
Learning the language essentially gave her the ability to see the future. 
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Didn't she already possess that ability? The beginning of the film is a flash forward and she repeatedly has flashes to what we end up learning is the future throughout the film, even before she learns the language. It would appear she always had the ability to see into the future. 

 
packersfan said:
Seems like a big gamble that Amy Adams learning their language is going to help them 3,000 years down the road, not to mention just her learning the language preventing the global attack at the end. Again, I thought the movie was well made and well acted (Adams, Renner and Whitaker are always money) but the aliens' motivation and the Chinese bit at the end were not well developed in my opinion. 
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It wasn't a gamble at all. They knew exactly how it would all work out. 

 
packersfan said:
Didn't she already possess that ability? The beginning of the film is a flash forward and she repeatedly has flashes to what we end up learning is the future throughout the film, even before she learns the language. It would appear she always had the ability to see into the future. 
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That's not how I interpreted it. They were just showing us the first flash forward out of order but all the rest started when she started to learn the language. 

 
bigbottom said:
It wasn't a gamble at all. They knew exactly how it would all work out. 
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Yeah if the whole point of the movie is the aliens can see into the future and hoped the U.S. would recruit a person on this planet who shares that ability you're right.

I'm not trying to rip the film. There was a lot about it I really liked. And I liked the time hopping element quite a bit. 

 
packersfan said:
Didn't she already possess that ability? The beginning of the film is a flash forward and she repeatedly has flashes to what we end up learning is the future throughout the film, even before she learns the language. It would appear she always had the ability to see into the future. 
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The beginning narration is a reflection back on her life that occurs in the future. Then we hit present day. From that point forward, the flashes arrive as she starts learning the language. That's how I remember it anyway. 

 
shadyridr said:
That's not how I interpreted it. They were just showing us the first flash forward out of order but all the rest started when she started to learn the language. 
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Perhaps. I guess if we just throw time out the window completely (and I know a big part of the film is how the aliens don't perceive time like we do) that would fit. 

 
packersfan said:
Watched the movie last night. Very well made and well acted but as TLEF316 said it is a bit slow. The pace made it difficult for me to remain engaged. I'm also not sure why Adams reciting the Chinese leader's dead wife's final words would result in an entire world pulling back on attacking the aliens. That seemed like a bit of a streeeeeeeeetch. Also, was the entire point of the aliens' arriving just so Adams could hook up with Jeremy Renner? I'm not really sure what the point of their "arrival" really was.    
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1. The Chinese general was using mah jong to communicate with them.  Another written "language" like what Louise was doing. She didn't like that - because mah jong is a zero sum game.  One person wins, the other loses.

If you remember at the beginning of the movie, she told forest Whitaker to ask the other linguist the sanskrit word for war. He said it was aggression. She said it was a disagreement over cows.  The idea that information is literally lost in translation is an important one because the Chinese general heard them say they would give a weapon and he was like OK, no more sharing information.  

Which makes sense because he was a military general thinking through a military paradigm.  The CIA guy was similarly always talking about how the aliens might be trying to get us to fight each other or might suck all the oxygen out of the room to kill them.  So the idea that they used the word weapon was important.  Louise didn't think weapon meant weapon.  She figured out it meant a tool, and was referring to their language and their ability to think independently of time. 

Louise figured that out and communicated to the Chinese general, which caused the general to reopen communications with the other countries and get them to stand down, which made the aliens leave.  She was only able to do that once she was able to figure out how to communicate with him. He was smart enough to realize that if she figured out how to transcend time, he could help her resolve the conflict by giving her a piece of information nobody else could know and the words it would take to convince him to stop the attack.  There's a bit of a time paradox here, because he tells her 18 months after she calls him, and he only knows to tell her because he found out she could transcend time when she called him.  

He's one of the heroes of the story because he figured out how to collaborate with her and how to solve the Big Problem.

2. No, the entire point of the aliens coming was to get us to stop fighting with each other and work together. The big turning point was when the daughter asks the word for the opposite of a competition, and Louise doesn't know right away, but with Ian's help, later answers a "non zero sum game". The heptapods were going to need humanity's help in 3000 years, and they need us to stop fighting with each other do they brought us a gift to help us understand. 

It turns out that Ian and Louise meeting was pivotal, though, because without that, they would never have had Hannah, and Hannah was the one who helped Louise come to several of the realizations that enabled her to figure out the heptapod language and timelessness. 

 
bostonfred said:
1. The Chinese general was using mah jong to communicate with them.  Another written "language" like what Louise was doing. She didn't like that - because mah jong is a zero sum game.  One person wins, the other loses.

If you remember at the beginning of the movie, she told forest Whitaker to ask the other linguist the sanskrit word for war. He said it was aggression. She said it was a disagreement over cows.  The idea that information is literally lost in translation is an important one because the Chinese general heard them say they would give a weapon and he was like OK, no more sharing information.  

Which makes sense because he was a military general thinking through a military paradigm.  The CIA guy was similarly always talking about how the aliens might be trying to get us to fight each other or might suck all the oxygen out of the room to kill them.  So the idea that they used the word weapon was important.  Louise didn't think weapon meant weapon.  She figured out it meant a tool, and was referring to their language and their ability to think independently of time. 

Louise figured that out and communicated to the Chinese general, which caused the general to reopen communications with the other countries and get them to stand down, which made the aliens leave.  She was only able to do that once she was able to figure out how to communicate with him. He was smart enough to realize that if she figured out how to transcend time, he could help her resolve the conflict by giving her a piece of information nobody else could know and the words it would take to convince him to stop the attack.  There's a bit of a time paradox here, because he tells her 18 months after she calls him, and he only knows to tell her because he found out she could transcend time when she called him.  

He's one of the heroes of the story because he figured out how to collaborate with her and how to solve the Big Problem.

2. No, the entire point of the aliens coming was to get us to stop fighting with each other and work together. The big turning point was when the daughter asks the word for the opposite of a competition, and Louise doesn't know right away, but with Ian's help, later answers a "non zero sum game". The heptapods were going to need humanity's help in 3000 years, and they need us to stop fighting with each other do they brought us a gift to help us understand. 

It turns out that Ian and Louise meeting was pivotal, though, because without that, they would never have had Hannah, and Hannah was the one who helped Louise come to several of the realizations that enabled her to figure out the heptapod language and timelessness. 
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Well said though I still think Louise cold-calling the general and repeating his dying wife's final words got him to stop a massive attack was a stretch. It's a leap (a pretty big one) on his part to conclude after hearing what she says that she's somehow been able to figure out what the aliens really want and that she can transcend time.  

 
packersfan said:
Well said though I still think Louise cold-calling the general and repeating his dying wife's final words got him to stop a massive attack was a stretch. It's a leap (a pretty big one) on his part to conclude after hearing what she says that she's somehow been able to figure out what the aliens really want and that she can transcend time.  
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The only person who could tell her what she needed to tell him to make that happen was the general.  The same general who have her his private cell phone number.  He knew exactly what information she would need to convince him. 

 
The first lines of the movie were her telling Hannah I used to think this was the beginning of your story.  The last lines of the full are her telling Hannah I now know that your story began the day they left. 

What you're supposed to realize is that she made the choice that day to marry Ian and have Hannah, which is shown pretty clearly when he goes for the big end of the movie kiss and she gives him a hug, looking off in the distance because she knows (and we know) what's going to happen if/ when they get together. She made the choice in that moment, and again late when he says let's make a baby, and you see all these things at the end of the movie and realize she knows where is all going and still chooses to have Hannah and all the good and bad that comes with it. 

 
bostonfred said:
The first lines of the movie were her telling Hannah I used to think this was the beginning of your story.  The last lines of the full are her telling Hannah I now know that your story began the day they left. 

What you're supposed to realize is that she made the choice that day to marry Ian and have Hannah, which is shown pretty clearly when he goes for the big end of the movie kiss and she gives him a hug, looking off in the distance because she knows (and we know) what's going to happen if/ when they get together. She made the choice in that moment, and again late when he says let's make a baby, and you see all these things at the end of the movie and realize she knows where is all going and still chooses to have Hannah and all the good and bad that comes with it. 
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Yeah that all made sense and makes for a very depressing ending if you think about it (she chooses a daughter she know will die and a husband she knows will leave and resent her) which I admired. 

 
packersfan said:
Yeah that all made sense and makes for a very depressing ending if you think about it (she chooses a daughter she know will die and a husband she knows will leave and resent her) which I admired. 
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It's only depressing if you ignore all the beautiful moments they will experience and share. That is the central message of the film, IMO. 

 
bigbottom said:
It's only depressing if you ignore all the beautiful moments they will experience and share. That is the central message of the film, IMO. 
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Yeah there's that but the daughter's still gonna die at a young age and Renner's dumping her. I like the fact she knowingly chose that. It was an anti-happy ending. 

 
packersfan said:
Yeah there's that but the daughter's still gonna die at a young age and Renner's dumping her. I like the fact she knowingly chose that. It was an anti-happy ending. 
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You say "Yeah, there's that," as if it's an aside, but it really is the entire point of Louise's journey. Life is a series of happy moments and sad moments. And just because there will be sad moments doesn't make the happy moments any less meaningful. In fact, one could argue it makes them more so.  

 
packersfan said:
Yeah there's that but the daughter's still gonna die at a young age and Renner's dumping her. I like the fact she knowingly chose that. It was an anti-happy ending. 
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Did she choose it though?  The whole idea of "choice" only makes sense if time is linear.  There is a built in determinism when time ceases to be linear and all the events of her life exist independently of what humans now perceive as time. 

 
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bigbottom said:
For those of you going to see this, understand that it is a very contemplative movie. It requires patience and focus. I would 100% see this in the theater not just because of the cinematic experience, but also to avoid the many distractions that often accompany home viewing. 

Do not read the spoiler tag below unless you've seen the film.

I was a mess during the last 10 minutes of the film, for pretty obvious reasons to those who know me here. I spent 14 months hoping and praying that my child wouldn't die, and one month knowing that he would. I now have scars on my soul and psyche that will never heal. I can't imagine enduring that for 14+ years. And yet, I understand her choice (to the extent it was a choice), because I wouldn't trade those 15 months for anything. Many of the greatest moments in my life happened during those 15 months. They mean everything to me. And given the chance (or the choice), I'd live them again in a heartbeat.

I guess for many, that may be a secondary aspect of the film as opposed to the central theme, but to me, it was the most monumentally powerful cinematic experience I've ever had.
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Just watched this with my wife, BB, and I feel the same way. What a remarkable, beautiful film.

 
I absolutely loved this movie.

I guess I was the only one who saw the movie and thought to myself, "oh, Louise decided not to tell Ian, and so he never left."  

Otherwise, I get stuck in a free-will problem.  If I think about my own life, I find a innumerable amount of "mistakes" (from the benign "I should have hit 16 against the dealer's five" to the very important, "I shouldn't have quit the job, because the abusive boss ended up getting fired 6 months later and I could have outlasted him.").  So I think it is an oversimplification to say "well, although many things were sad about her life, she chose to live it because of all the good things."  Sure, I get that.  But that doesn't mean I wouldn't tell my kid not to go out on Saturday night if I knew his buddy was going to drive drunk and get in a car accident.  I used to many negatives there, but hope you get the point.

So, sure, she can decide to have Hannah because of all the wonderful things that come from it.  But shouldn't Louise be able to make different decisions based on what she knew in the future?  I guess the argument to that is that at the end of the day (life) she sits back and says "well, I had a good life. So I'm not going to change anything."  I guess, but does that mean you won't hit that 16 even if you know that a five is the next card up?  The argument is that you would then alter the course of life from the known to the unknown, but . . . we get back to the free will problem.

I guess on my own life, i could say there are a number of things that I've made "mistakes" about, but i would NEVER change those.  But that doesn't necessarily lock me in to "correcting" some other mistakes, otherwise I don't really have free will.  This reminds me a little about the "two envelop" problem, which is still my favorite thought experiment. 

Anyway, @bostonfred, or biggy, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. 

 
I watched this last night and I must say, however thought provoking, it was a boring movie.  I like Amy Adams however.   I made my wife sit and watch the whole thing, because after the first hour she wanted to retire for the evening. 

 
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JohnnyU said:
I watched this last night and I must say, however thought provoking, it was a boring movie.  I like Amy Adams however.   I made my wife sit and watch the whole thing, because after the first hour she wanted to retire for the evening. 
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Perhaps you had to see in a theatre with an audience to really enjoy it as there was a lot going on and it is fairly easy to be distracted if you are watching at home on a small screen. I had mixed feelings about the film when I saw it and then and after contemplating the ending for a few days decided that I was dissatisfied with the film as a whole and wouldn't recommend it. That said I certainly didn't find it boring, although I might on a second viewing.

 
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It's on Hulu. My wife watched it for the first time and we had a good discussion about it. One of my favorites.

 
EYLive said:
It's on Hulu. My wife watched it for the first time and we had a good discussion about it. One of my favorites.
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No, no...there's no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the Southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War:

This

 
EYLive said:
It's on Hulu. My wife watched it for the first time and we had a good discussion about it. One of my favorites.
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It’s also on Amazon Prime. My wife can’t stay awake because it’s a couple hours past he bedtime. 

 
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