Yeah that's more logical the more I think about it. The notion of non-linear time does not imply the ability to change future events that have already been seen - which by having been seen already must actually take place, so there is no ability to diverge from whatever actions led to that future. So it's wrong to look at Amy Adams as making the choice to go ahead with Renner despite knowing how it turns out; it already turned out so she already made that choice.
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"Arrival" the movie (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter TripItUp
- Start date
bigbottom
Footballguy
Upthread I posted an excerpt from an article that discusses how the underlying source material informs the movie. Give it a read - it deals with the very issue you are raising.
PlayaHata
Footballguy
Just back from seeing it and so I'm reading through this thread for the first time.
Can someone explain Louise talking to the Chinese general? Specifically what she said and why that changed his mind? Something about his wife's last words? That part totally confused me. Perhaps I missed something...
Can someone explain Louise talking to the Chinese general? Specifically what she said and why that changed his mind? Something about his wife's last words? That part totally confused me. Perhaps I missed something...
dgreen
Footballguy
She could see the future. She saw a future event of her at a party talking to the Chinese general. At that party, the general gave her his phone number and told her what his wife's last words were. She then used that information in the present to call him and tell him his wife's last words. In the present, that's something she should have no way of knowing. That was used by her to show him that something pretty amazing was going on and he, and the rest of the world, need to work with the aliens.
PlayaHata
Footballguy
squistion
Footballguy
No, at the party he asks her how she knew his wife's last words and then gave them to her along with his phone number, except there is no way in the present that could have happened. A plot hole you can shoot a cannon through.
Similar to other time travel movies like Terminator (and yes, Arrival isn't time travel but time pre-cognizance) but still, you have to live the present first, you can't take something from the future and retroactively change the present with what didn't happen (in this case calling the general). There was no way in the present she could have known his phone number or what his wife's dying words were, so he can't in the future tell her she did that when it never happened in the past. If you want to suspend disbelief about this logical inconsistency fine, but it is a huge flaw in the movie IMO.
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bigbottom
Footballguy
squistion
Footballguy
Which is how the present always unfolds. Same flaw as with the first Terminator film, John Connor can not send his father back from the future, when he wasn't his father the first time.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Not a flaw at all once you accept that time is a circle. She can remember the future just as she remembers the past. Time is not linear.
squistion
Footballguy
But the present has to happen the first time. John Connor had a father or he couldn't have been born. Hence, he couldn't in the future send some other guy from his present back to the past to become his father who was not his father to begin with. Same logical inconsistency with Arrival. Accept it if you can suspend disbelief - I can't and a lot of others find this a stumbling block they can't overcome, if you read online reviews and criticisms.
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bigbottom
Footballguy
It doesn't have to happen the first time. That's the point. You keep talking about time linearly.
Edit: Your point stands for Terminator. But it doesn't for Arrival.
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squistion
Footballguy
Mad Cow
Welshers and Dawdlers Beware!
I think the point was to learn that language. Not so much about being able to speak the same language, right?
ghostguy123
Footballguy
Because without all the work Amy Adams had to go through she would not have been able to realize her gift, and she would not have been able to use the future to alter the present. That and this alien event was about to destroy the world, which brought the world together once this gift presented itself.
I am still having somewhat of a hard time understanding the scene with the Chinese president, though I am just basically going to accept the fact that Amy Adams had a gift where she could change the future by seeing an ideal future and using that in the present.
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Willie Neslon
Footballguy
My biggest issue with the movie was Forest Whitaker's accent. Why do it? I'm not even sure what it was. Non-specific new england? Jamaican? At times southern. Had other issues as well. Good movie though.
Mad Cow
Welshers and Dawdlers Beware!
Very interesting to watch the movie and catch a great message from it, and then to go read the short story, which in my mind, had a very different message. Both thought provoking. One movie I would say watch the movie first then read the source material.
oso diablo
Footballguy
nominated for Best Picture, and a few others, but no nomination for Amy Adams. :snub:
oso diablo
Footballguy
matttyl
Footballguy
Saw it last night, a few questions -
Was Amy Adams able to see all possible futures, or just one? In the movie, she saw one particular future, one where she would eventually meet the Chinese general and he'd give her that vital information - but in order for that specific future to occur, something specific needed to happen in the present (the phone call). If that phone call didn't happen, that particular future wouldn't happen. This question also would apply to her child.
Speaking of her child - she made a drawing with the canary in a cage, as well as a clay mold of one of the aliens. I have a feeling that meant far more than I got out of it. It just meant that those events were "after" the arrival. It would also mean that mom or dad described those aliens, and their encounters with them to her. Ok, anything else I'm missing?
Was Amy Adams able to see all possible futures, or just one? In the movie, she saw one particular future, one where she would eventually meet the Chinese general and he'd give her that vital information - but in order for that specific future to occur, something specific needed to happen in the present (the phone call). If that phone call didn't happen, that particular future wouldn't happen. This question also would apply to her child.
Speaking of her child - she made a drawing with the canary in a cage, as well as a clay mold of one of the aliens. I have a feeling that meant far more than I got out of it. It just meant that those events were "after" the arrival. It would also mean that mom or dad described those aliens, and their encounters with them to her. Ok, anything else I'm missing?
Buckychudd
Footballguy
There aren't multiple possible futures.....just one as she lives/lived it.
You got what was meant from the child. It's just meant to clue you in that this is post alien encounter, not pre like you were lead to believe up to those points.
matttyl
Footballguy
That one possible future event was only set in motion because of a particular thing needing to happen in the present. If that thing didn't happen, that future wouldn't have happened. Obviously that call could easily have not happened, but you're saying she would have no idea what road that would lead to.
Ok on the kid stuff, just felt like they were hitting us over the head with stuff. Also wondering why the parents would have described the look of the aliens in such detail to such a small child (for the play-dough mold of one). I mean, they were kinda scary looking things.
Buckychudd
Footballguy
For her time isn't a linear event, it's all happening at once. Her life is exactly how she decided it to happen.
As for the aliens, by that time I'm sure they were in textbooks, etc....a pretty famous event in history.
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bigbottom
Footballguy
Why not? Other than size, no scarier looking than an octopus. Plus, as it turns out, the aliens were friends of Earth and their gift brought peace to humankind.
matttyl
Footballguy
So if she knew that her time would have a future, because she's seen it - why have Renner (whatever his character name was) guard her from possibly being shot when she was making the call? That must mean that things can still occur, making the future she's seen not actually happen. Maybe an odd quibble of the movie, just trying to wrap my head around what I've seen.
bigbottom
Footballguy
I think it may be a mistake to assume that she has a full conscious understanding of what is happening in that scene and all of the details, ramifications and possibilities (or lack of possibilities). In any event, maybe she survived making the call specifically because she asked him to guard her.
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El Floppo
Footballguy
I think she's slowly coming to grips with even understanding that she's starting to see time differently... I don't see her hanging onto more linear methods as distracting or negative.
matttyl
Footballguy
Mad Cow
Welshers and Dawdlers Beware!
The short story has a very cool take on that. I felt the movie and story had very different take homes, but in reading the book, the ability to see the future comes from an absolute willingness to live it, to not alter it. As you alter it, then the future is lost and can no longer be seen. Not sure if I explained that well, but nonetheless a cool thing to consider and ponder.
bostonfred
Footballguy
I love this movie so hard. I'm going to post a lot about this one soon but a little food for thought to get us started
Some movies have a tangible pressure on the hero. Cut the blue wire, or the bomb will blue and people will die. Meet the boy and discover he is the one before it's too late. This movie was about profound discovery, and the pressure was on us to realize it.
What are some of the most profound things a human - any human - can experience? Finding love, the birth of a child, losing someone you love, losing a child, truly understanding someone else, reaching the peak of your career, helping humanity... Louise does all of that in a two hour movie.
What are some of the most profound things humanity could accomplish? World peace, engaging alien life, learning to peacefully coexist with alien life, understanding space and time more completely. They accomplish all of this, too.
Yet if the story tellers had chosen not to include the aliens - or if this was all a hallucination by Louise as she was lying in her death bed, or if God came to her and offered her a choice to redo her life - would the story change? Could it have been told as effectively another way?
Here's a question - Is there any way that Louise knowing horrible things - that Ian would leave her and her child would die - could NOT have change her relationships with them?
How would you handle telling your husband the truth - that you knew before your first kiss that you'd have a child and your child was going to die and you still married him, still had her, and didn't tell him and still chose this life?
Now understand it from his perspective - how would you feel knowing the greatest tragedy of your life was predetermined and avoidable and your wife choose it anyways and let your child die and let you live through it and even knew how you'd react and still let it all happen?
If you're Louise - oh my God. How would you not break down when Hannah started talking about going to college, or getting married, or flossing her damn teeth? Does it mean you live her any less to know that and not tell her?
Let's get back to the heptapods. Do you think Abbott and Costello knew one of them would die on earth? Did they die because of the explosion? Did they go to earth knowing one would die and knowing that whoever was on Louise's ship would die, but volunteer anyways? They let Louise and Ian on board with a bomb and they could have stopped it at any time - they could have stopped the bomb from coming on board, they could have ejected it back out, they obviously knew it was the because they launched Ian and Louise out but also because they tried to warn them first.
They never got mad - they withdrew but they didn't retaliate. If you know the future, there's no need to retaliate - ever - because you knew it would happen and you know how it will turn out.
There was a lot of symbolism from their first meeting - Louise puts her bare hand on the glass, five long slender fingers pointing up. The heptapod puts it's hand out, seven fingers arranged in a circle. Their writing is in a circle, ours is directional. Their writing isn't permanent - they shoot some inky gas out and it makes a word and the writing kind of shimmers and disappears. It's impermanent but memorable. When we write something, it's permanent from that point forward until it's destroyed or erased. The circle doesn't have a beginning or an end.
Which brings us back to Hannah, and her palindromic name that doesn't have a beginning or an end. It's the same whether you look at it from the left or the right, like her life was the same viewed from before or after. And make no mistake, she had an incredibly meaningful life. It may have been short, and she may not have written a book or solved world peace, but she contributed to both and more.
If Hannah never exists, Louise never premembers talking to her about the non zero sum game* and doesn't have the epiphany that they need to collaborate instead of compete. She never cracks the code that when she premembers Hannah talking about her father, which gives her the epiphany about why Ian left her, which makes her understand the circular nature of time.
I've heard people say why didn't the aliens translate for us instead of making us learn their language. The whole point was to have us learn to see the world without time. Language was the tool they used to convey that.
I've seen people talking about Louise being selfish to have Hannah - #### that. Without Hannah, Louise never saves the world. Without Louise, Hannah never exists. People see losing Hannah as a burden on Louise or an unfair thing to do to Hannah or a selfish decision not to tell Ian but it was none of that. Louise was who she was because of Hannah. Hannah lived a short but incredibly meaningful life. That's not a tragedy excerpt when viewed through the lens of someone who outlived her.
And yet I don't think Ian is selfish for not being able to be with Louise anymore. She had a terrible burden. The day her baby was born she knew that her child would die young. When Ian gave his big cheesy line about oh I knew something magical happened but it wasn't the aliens it was you, she's like, OK, I know what's going to happen here too, and they don't kiss. She hugs him and had a sad realization in her eyes. And she chose it anyways, because even knowing the pain she'd go through - and she was a mess when Hannah died - it was worth it for the good that came from it.
Now extrapolate that to your own life.
Would you make the same choice Louise did?
It's not an easy decision.
But it changes the paradigm. If you had the gift of a daughter like Hannah, you wouldn't see her death as a loss, but as the end of a gift that had an immeasurable impact on your life. You wouldn't see your death as the end of things, just the end of your story as part of the larger story. When bad things happened you would have known they were coming and accepted them.
Now take away her paradigm. You know bad things are coming. You don't know when and which ones, but you know bad things will happen. You know you'll die, but you don't know when. You know good things will happen - but you don't know when or which ones and you don't know when they'll end.
What's the difference? Not knowing. The difference between accepting that good things end and mourning their existence is the surprise of it, the feeling you didn't get to prepare. But not knowing also means when you fall in love or have a baby you aren't looking at all the bad things that will happen later, you get to live in the moment and imagine a better future.
So in a way I think the message is to appreciate the gift of not knowing, but also to accept the long view when bad things happen like when relationships end or loved ones die and appreciate the good you had without the burden of knowing it was going to end.
It's easy to say I don't envy Ian, or Hannah, or Louise but in some ways I envy each of them and I'd think each of them might envy each other.
So much good stuff in this story. Absolutely brilliantly told.
* I also loved this. Non zero sum game. What a ####ty way of answering the question what's the opposite of competition. Collaboration. Cooperation. She's a linguist, she knows all the best words. Yet neither one of those will do because the point of the prememory isn't that you need to collaborate, but that this is not a zero sum game and that collaboration makes us all better. Which is the opposite of what she feared the Chinese were teaching by playing mah jong with them, which is a zero sum game with winners and losers and the luck of the dice. Yet the solution to everything was a collaboration between her and the Chinese general where he reached out to her, which caused her to reach out to him, which caused him to reach out to her... because they both realized it was not a zero sum game.
What are some of the most profound things a human - any human - can experience? Finding love, the birth of a child, losing someone you love, losing a child, truly understanding someone else, reaching the peak of your career, helping humanity... Louise does all of that in a two hour movie.
What are some of the most profound things humanity could accomplish? World peace, engaging alien life, learning to peacefully coexist with alien life, understanding space and time more completely. They accomplish all of this, too.
Yet if the story tellers had chosen not to include the aliens - or if this was all a hallucination by Louise as she was lying in her death bed, or if God came to her and offered her a choice to redo her life - would the story change? Could it have been told as effectively another way?
Here's a question - Is there any way that Louise knowing horrible things - that Ian would leave her and her child would die - could NOT have change her relationships with them?
How would you handle telling your husband the truth - that you knew before your first kiss that you'd have a child and your child was going to die and you still married him, still had her, and didn't tell him and still chose this life?
Now understand it from his perspective - how would you feel knowing the greatest tragedy of your life was predetermined and avoidable and your wife choose it anyways and let your child die and let you live through it and even knew how you'd react and still let it all happen?
If you're Louise - oh my God. How would you not break down when Hannah started talking about going to college, or getting married, or flossing her damn teeth? Does it mean you live her any less to know that and not tell her?
Let's get back to the heptapods. Do you think Abbott and Costello knew one of them would die on earth? Did they die because of the explosion? Did they go to earth knowing one would die and knowing that whoever was on Louise's ship would die, but volunteer anyways? They let Louise and Ian on board with a bomb and they could have stopped it at any time - they could have stopped the bomb from coming on board, they could have ejected it back out, they obviously knew it was the because they launched Ian and Louise out but also because they tried to warn them first.
They never got mad - they withdrew but they didn't retaliate. If you know the future, there's no need to retaliate - ever - because you knew it would happen and you know how it will turn out.
There was a lot of symbolism from their first meeting - Louise puts her bare hand on the glass, five long slender fingers pointing up. The heptapod puts it's hand out, seven fingers arranged in a circle. Their writing is in a circle, ours is directional. Their writing isn't permanent - they shoot some inky gas out and it makes a word and the writing kind of shimmers and disappears. It's impermanent but memorable. When we write something, it's permanent from that point forward until it's destroyed or erased. The circle doesn't have a beginning or an end.
Which brings us back to Hannah, and her palindromic name that doesn't have a beginning or an end. It's the same whether you look at it from the left or the right, like her life was the same viewed from before or after. And make no mistake, she had an incredibly meaningful life. It may have been short, and she may not have written a book or solved world peace, but she contributed to both and more.
If Hannah never exists, Louise never premembers talking to her about the non zero sum game* and doesn't have the epiphany that they need to collaborate instead of compete. She never cracks the code that when she premembers Hannah talking about her father, which gives her the epiphany about why Ian left her, which makes her understand the circular nature of time.
I've heard people say why didn't the aliens translate for us instead of making us learn their language. The whole point was to have us learn to see the world without time. Language was the tool they used to convey that.
I've seen people talking about Louise being selfish to have Hannah - #### that. Without Hannah, Louise never saves the world. Without Louise, Hannah never exists. People see losing Hannah as a burden on Louise or an unfair thing to do to Hannah or a selfish decision not to tell Ian but it was none of that. Louise was who she was because of Hannah. Hannah lived a short but incredibly meaningful life. That's not a tragedy excerpt when viewed through the lens of someone who outlived her.
And yet I don't think Ian is selfish for not being able to be with Louise anymore. She had a terrible burden. The day her baby was born she knew that her child would die young. When Ian gave his big cheesy line about oh I knew something magical happened but it wasn't the aliens it was you, she's like, OK, I know what's going to happen here too, and they don't kiss. She hugs him and had a sad realization in her eyes. And she chose it anyways, because even knowing the pain she'd go through - and she was a mess when Hannah died - it was worth it for the good that came from it.
Now extrapolate that to your own life.
Would you make the same choice Louise did?
It's not an easy decision.
But it changes the paradigm. If you had the gift of a daughter like Hannah, you wouldn't see her death as a loss, but as the end of a gift that had an immeasurable impact on your life. You wouldn't see your death as the end of things, just the end of your story as part of the larger story. When bad things happened you would have known they were coming and accepted them.
Now take away her paradigm. You know bad things are coming. You don't know when and which ones, but you know bad things will happen. You know you'll die, but you don't know when. You know good things will happen - but you don't know when or which ones and you don't know when they'll end.
What's the difference? Not knowing. The difference between accepting that good things end and mourning their existence is the surprise of it, the feeling you didn't get to prepare. But not knowing also means when you fall in love or have a baby you aren't looking at all the bad things that will happen later, you get to live in the moment and imagine a better future.
So in a way I think the message is to appreciate the gift of not knowing, but also to accept the long view when bad things happen like when relationships end or loved ones die and appreciate the good you had without the burden of knowing it was going to end.
It's easy to say I don't envy Ian, or Hannah, or Louise but in some ways I envy each of them and I'd think each of them might envy each other.
So much good stuff in this story. Absolutely brilliantly told.
* I also loved this. Non zero sum game. What a ####ty way of answering the question what's the opposite of competition. Collaboration. Cooperation. She's a linguist, she knows all the best words. Yet neither one of those will do because the point of the prememory isn't that you need to collaborate, but that this is not a zero sum game and that collaboration makes us all better. Which is the opposite of what she feared the Chinese were teaching by playing mah jong with them, which is a zero sum game with winners and losers and the luck of the dice. Yet the solution to everything was a collaboration between her and the Chinese general where he reached out to her, which caused her to reach out to him, which caused him to reach out to her... because they both realized it was not a zero sum game.
bostonfred
Footballguy
One of the most symbolic scenes in the movie was Louise holding a ruler over the circular letter and drawing a line through it like she was trying to measure it from side to side. I think we can agree now that that was before she understood.
I was disappointed by this movie. It had bad linguistics and worse physics, and those elements were too distracting for me to get anything else out of it.
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squistion
Footballguy
I haven't read the book, but I had read a half dozen reviews on it and none of them raised that point, that the future would be lost and no longer seen if you tried to alter it.
bostonfred
Footballguy
I think the question of whether she should see it and whether you should encourage it are two different questions. I'd rather she saw it of her own accord if I were you.
Mad Cow
Welshers and Dawdlers Beware!
bigbottom
Footballguy
A movie about alien first contact? She'll never voluntarily choose to watch a film marketed like that on her own without any encouragement.
squistion
Footballguy
Then either you missed your calling as a sci-fi book reviewer or the people who do so online should get another job. It is an explanation that makes sense not only for the book but also the movie but I don't recall seeing that take before that, that this is a gift one can lose if you don't follow what is inevitable and unchangeable.
Mad Cow
Welshers and Dawdlers Beware!
bostonfred
Footballguy
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.
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.
I just watched this and loved it. It was engrossing though I have to admit I had a lot of difficulty encapsulating what everything meant in my head as I watched it. Might have helped if I hadn't missed first few minutes getting dinner with wife. Just finished skimming through comments/spoilers in here to understand the movie better.
TLEF316
Footballguy
Saw it this weekend. I thought it was well acted and interesting (both visually and intellectually) but I have to say that it was just a little too slow for me to be fully engaged. Liked it but didn't love it. I thought a lot of the "learning the language" stuff through the middle of the movie was a little off. They seem to go from "Human" to "Ian walks" to "weapon" (which is a pretty abstract concept, especially for an alien race with technology so much more advanced that ours) pretty quickly. They tried to spell out the process of getting to the "Why are you here?" question through that earlier scene with Adams and Whittaker (where she explains it on the whiteboard) but I don't think they did a good job taking us through it. Maybe bringing us into what the humans at the other sites (who were presumably helping and collaborating until the Chinese got aggressive) would have helped with this but it probably would have detracted from Adams' story (which was obviously the big point of the film)
Because of the flashbacks at the beginning, i went through most of the movie thinking that Adams' daughter was already dead. I think it caused me to not pay as close attention as I should have to all the hints in the subsequent flashbacks throughout the rest of the film.
Because of the flashbacks at the beginning, i went through most of the movie thinking that Adams' daughter was already dead. I think it caused me to not pay as close attention as I should have to all the hints in the subsequent flashbacks throughout the rest of the film.
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