Amir Review: Movie Arrival

[FrantzM]

We have learned to be hyper-critical. The movie is not perfect but it great IMO and thouht-provoking ni a way few movies or art pieces are. The acting is wonderful, the direction is well-suited to the very intricate plot. The cinematography suits the mood. The movie is about communications and uncertainty in communicating. The atmosphere is one of haze of lowkey, of shadows and blunted constrast... The unknown.

Looking at the movie from the viewpoint of nonlinear time.. There are some things that are inescapable: The notion of a before and after. The Aliens came to us at a given time .. From that point on there has to be a "before" and when they left, an "after", The non-linearity of time seems to relate to certain , fixed-in-time events.
I love that movie and consider it a Masterpiece. One of those rare movies that become better with repeated viewing. Ordered the BD video since UHD doesn't seem to bring anything to the story.

 

[fas42]

Always used to enjoy reading sci-fi, because the good stuff "bent your mind" - the silliness of the space opera, cowboys and indians, variety in movie form annoys one pretty quickly; nice to get done with a more interesting plot line.

Would be interesting to come across other consciousness, which finds it bizarre that us humans are trapped in this, following a one way, sharply focused, pointer through the time dimension journey.

 

[watchnerd]

One quandary is why advanced aliens don't try to figure out our language than the other way around! Surely that would be a heck of an easier outcome given their advancements.

Because, in this case, learning our language wouldn't do them any good.

There is another critical point in the movie: Jeremy Renner asks Louise what she thinks of the theory that language effects our thinking patterns and that learning a new language can change our thought patterns.

This isn't a throw-away comment; learning the heptapod lingo changes Louise's thinking so that she is no longer perceiving time linearly.

In order for the humans to save the heptapods 3,000 years in the future, they have to learn how to perceive time the way the heptapods do (although we're not told why or what will happen to the heptapods).

IMHO, the movie isn't really about the aliens. The aliens are a McGuffin, a plot to device to discuss:

1. How humanity / nations would react in the face of outside non-human intelligence

2. How life's meaning would change dramatically if time is not linear (quantum entanglement theories allow that this might be true if entanglement can be broken)

 

[watchnerd]

You are very right. I have lost count of how much "language" our male dog has taught me than the other way around. He actually created his own routines and by repetition taught me what they mean. Barking in a certain way was his first invention to tell me it is dinner time. Giving me the paw an hour before that where I am sitting is another.

It was easy to miss his signals at first because they want a set routine and look at life that way and we are quite random compared to him. It was only by noticing the regularity of his routine that I figured out he was trying to tell me something.

There have been a couple studies showing that dogs are better at reading human body language and facial expressions than human infants.

 

[amirm]

Because, in this case, learning our language wouldn't do them any good.

Why not? Once they learned our language they could teach us theirs or anything else. Heck of a lot easier to say, "this is the symbol for dog than to draw a blob."

 

[watchnerd]

Why not? Once they learned our language they could teach us theirs or anything else. Heck of a lot easier to say, "this is the symbol for dog than to draw a blob."

Because:

1. Heptapods learning English doesn't allow humans to change how humans perceive time
2. The blobs were necessary to learn Heptapod because you can't express simultaneity of everything in a sentence that makes sense in human language.

To a Heptapod, "I threw the frisbee, it landed in the tree" and "The frisbee fell out of the tree, into my hand" are the same thing.

This can't be expressed in human language.

(Unless one counts math as a language)

 

[amirm]

1. Heptapods learning English doesn't allow humans to change how humans perceive time

That's a hypothesis behind the movie. It is not reality. Best Japanese I learned was from bi-lingual Japanese people. Worst was me trying to learn it on my own. And learning Japanese did not at all help me understand Japanese culture. It was them speaking in English and living with them that did that.

 

[watchnerd]

That's a hypothesis behind the movie. It is not reality.

Right. Languages are not neural viruses that reprogram our brains.

 

[Blumlein 88]

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Generally what evidence there is scientifically is against the idea. Plus these fellows died in 1939 and 1941. They would have tempered many ideas that have been attributed to their hypothesis if they were alive. They put much more credence in culture, but wondered if the language did effect thinking in some significant way beyond just the culture.

So they likely would not have gone along with the implied idea that when Amy Adam's character began to think and dream in the heptapod language it would also have given her a new sense of non-linear time.