Okaaaaay, every word of this essay is going to be a spoiler so please watch the movie before you even begin to read this, because I wouldn't want to take away from the beautiful experience of watching this film for the first time.
To begin with, I’d like to address that I'm not a big fan of the sci-fi alien movie genre, especially because most of them fail to realize that at its core, a good sci-fi is about humanity. our hopes and fears, principles, beliefs and behaviors.
They follow the same trope of a super intelligent alien being threatening to destroy the planet that eventually somehow loses to us, because of some unique human trait like love or compassion. I find it peculiar and egocentric for humans to think that an intelligent life form that could figure out a way of interstellar travel, clearly much more advanced than us would not be able to understand these emotions which are (technically) chemicals and algorithms in our brains...only goes to show the limitations of human imagination. Also, an extremely extremely anthropocentric, white-washed view of the situation (somehow aliens always attack only the White House, haha).
Arrival by Denis Villeneuve is therefore a special one because not only managed to make me a fan of a movie of this genre but it asked ethical, moral, philosophical questions about humanity and our relationship to language and time. It is a story about characters trying to understand an alien species that encouraged to let us further understand ourselves. I believe, when we study an 'other' in an open objective way, we're simultaneously studying ourselves.
Arrival was adapted for screen from a short story called ‘The Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang. But I have to give huge huge huge credits to the screenwriter Eric Heisserer and director Denis Villeneuve for turning this short story into a film and using that medium of film to emphasize the themes of the story itself.
I rarely like when things are adapted from one medium to the other, because each medium has its constraints and opportunities that provide special meaning to the art it produces. So whenever it’s done with such beauty and intention, I can't help but call it genius.
The only other time I’ve felt that an artist with such good command over their craft is when I read ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy. I’m obsessed with her. In one of her earlier interviews, she mentions how there have been offers to turn the book into a movie, but being a screenwriter herself, she realizes the differences in both the mediums. The language of the book is a unique one. I cannot imagine it being translated into a movie, because most of what you feel throughout the book isn't about the story but the way it is written. It is about the craft of writing.
To watch this film, is to watch a director in command of the craft of filmmaking. You feel like he knows why the film is constructed the way it is. Arrival is just as concerned with the language of film, as it is with written or spoken or alien language.
The film itself begins as an experiment in Kuleshov Effect - the phenomenon in which a viewer derives meaning from two sequential shots - a montage of Louise with her daughter’s birth, moments in their lives and her eventual death, and then we see her coming to teach at her school on the day of the arrival. He uses these common techniques that film use - to trick us into creating our own timeline of the film. We assume that it's linear, we read Louise's disinterest as despondency or grief. Sprinkled throughout the film, he does this with Louise's character looking anxious or sad, along with shots of her with her daughter, reaffirming our bias that those are her memories.
It's only later in the film, when Louise herself realizes that these are snippets from her future, do we as an audience gain the same insight. Writing a screenplay in a way that gets you so in touch with a character is a brilliant stroke of mastery. This also implies a larger theme of the film that communication is limited by perspective, which later on is revealed to show the limitations of human communications. The genius of Villeneuve lies in understanding and total control of the craft - a theme once introduced has echoes throughout the story - the alien language and their perception of time is circular, and so is the film.
The first dialogue of the film - "now I'm not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings" - is a reflection of this circularity.
I feel like much like the gift of language that the aliens provide Louise in the film, that changes her perspective, Denis with his filmmaking gifts us a new perspective to see life through.
The theme of language plays a central role in the movie. At some point in my life, I know I want to delve much deeper into linguistic studies. I have always been fascinated with language, and this film only went on to reaffirm my intrigue for the subject.
There are multitude of ways in which the film discusses language. The most obvious one is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - the language you speak determines the way you think. As Louise begins to learn a language that has no beginning and no end, a language that doesn't perceive time in a linear manner as we do, she starts thinking and almost existing non-linearly. It's only by the end we realize that the snippets we see aren't memories or dreams or even future predictions. Louise seems to be living life in a non-linear timeline. She exists in different points in her life simultaneously. I literally got goosebumps.
It also discusses the limitations created by language in human communication. Louise being a linguistic expertise, understands the importance of patience, trust and communication. Every choice she makes is in pursuit of these values. While the antagonists work with impatience, fear and even silence.
Throughout the film, the heptapods make no acts of aggression whatsoever, all the conflict comes from humans. It emphasizes on the fact that sometimes we let our differences make us forget that we are more common than we think. We are biologically the same - homo sapiens. Everything else is based on stories and myths that we have built to unite or divide ourselves into groups.
In the face of an extraterrestrial encounter, which in itself is a subject of philosophical importance - in the way we view ourselves in this universe - we fail to recognize this unity. We let our self-created boundaries of nations and territories separate us. We again project our own self-knowledge onto the heptapods to justify violence. - “just grab a history book.”
It is a constant reminder of our anthropocentric worldview and humanity’s constant ignorance to accept that ‘we are part of a larger whole’ - which again is reflected in the film by the 1/12 fractions that must unite to gain a larger understanding.
Bearing in mind this concept - one of my favorite lines of the movie is the one changes everything. The phrase that stops the threat of violence and war, and forces humanity to come together. It the one that Louise whispers to the General - his wife’s last words - “In war, there are no winners, only widows.”
Cocooned within this larger narrative, lies a fragile story of the human experience. The emotions we feel - joy, grief, heartbreak, love, anger, anxiety.
Another important theme of the film was the idea of freewill within the human experience. Even though Louise understands Hannah’s fate, she chooses to go through the pain and grief, rather have loved and lost than not have Hannah at all as part of her life.
But it makes you think of the value of each life. She calls Hannah “unstoppable”, with her poetry and swim trophies - how her small journey still manages to leave an impact on the people around her. How each of us has some effect on others just purely because of our existence and it's a beautiful sentiment to have, and I’m glad this film made me view life in that way.
In the film, her character realizes the universe is deterministic and she must learn to embrace the inevitable. In doing so, it also addresses the larger philosophical question - if you know how badly it's going to end - do you still do it? It reminds me of Nietzsche’s idea of ‘amor fati’, it's a lot like my own perspective on life as well. It is an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. It means that these counterforces in their way are evidence of the fact that they’re actually changing something meaningful. Through the lens of affirmation, the good and the ugly are both part of the absolute privilege that we possess to be alive.
Maybe I'll end this by posing the same question as the movie 'if you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?'