The part I missed the first time was the little narrative about the aliens' writing, and the work they were doing. When I came back from the restroom the first time, I remember wondering how they had acquired all that vocabulary. Now I know there was a considerable amount of time covered in the couple of minutes I missed. It made more sense after that. Also, when Louise is trying to write on the wall and puts both hands up and then says she can't do it with both hands--well, I didn't know what they were talking about the first time.

AMDG

I remember not being sure specifically what she meant with the "both hands" remark. When exactly did that happen? Well, "when" is a bit problematic in that context. :-) But at what point in the movie.

Something I've wondered about: in normal aka real time, does the opening scene take place before or after everything else?

I.e: if the story begins in year 0 and ends with the daughter's death in year 20 (I don't remember exactly what age she is when she dies), is the opening in year 0 or somewhere past year 20? It doesn't really matter, but I wonder.

In the little narrative part where they are talking about the progress they have made and the work that Louise is doing, they talk about how difficult it would be for us to write a sentence beginning at both end at the same time with both hands. Before we could start writing, we would have to plan out all the spacing, etc. and it would take us a long time if we could do it at all. The aliens write a sentence or phrase from both directions at once in a couple of seconds. So that scene comes right before the aliens give her all the information and the explosion takes place.

Everything that happens before she goes to her classroom and finds out about the aliens landing happens after the aliens come--thinking in our limited linear way. ;-)

At the beginning, she says, "I used to think this was the beginning of your story..." and we see a table in the dark with two abandoned wine glasses--I assume Hannah is being conceived at this point. Then Louise says that knows she knows now that Hannah's story began the day the aliens arrived. However, on the day the aliens leave, she says, "Now I know your story began the day they left." (This might be paraphrase.) Because Hannah's whole life is a palindrome. And presumably ours are too.

AMDG

Stu, We went on one Sunday and then the next Saturday. Watching it again helps a lot.

AMDG

When the light dawned on me I immediately thought of "In my end is my beginning."

That detail of the two wine glasses is just the kind of thing I missed and might have picked up on a second viewing.

This is my understanding of the basic story line in linear time--see if y'all agree.

Aliens land.

Louise is recruited to help communicate with them.

She and Ian meet, learn to understand the aliens, save the world, fall in love.

Louise and Ian marry and conceive a child;
Louise knows that the child will die young but chooses to have her anyway.

Unhappy with Louise's decision (not sure when he finds out?--presumably after daughter's birth), Ian leaves Louise.

Daughter grows up and dies, and the whole story is told from a point of view beyond that.

Rob, What I wish that I had watched for the second time around and didn't was how the scenes with her daughter co-ordinate with the visits to the aliens.

Also, I think we see--in the scene about the zero-sum-game for instance--that for Louise, the past and the future are informing each other. It isn't just moving one way.

AMDG

Right, Janet, but doesn't one of the aliens refer to her "gift" at one point? I didn't take that to mean her linguistic gift, but rather her gift of "second sight." She learns to use it by her interaction with the aliens, of course, but it seems that she already had it but didn't realize it, hence her mistaking of her "premonitions" for memories. I don't think this makes sense otherwise, as Villeneuve gives us as viewers no real reason to suspect that they're not memories until later in the film. This is what makes it so well crafted -- the director plots things in such a way as that the viewer's understanding of what's going on mirrors Louise's growing self-understanding.

The palindrome thing is thus paradoxical: it's both the result of her growing understanding (in terms of her grasp of it) and the cause of it.

"if one of the aliens says that, tell me where after you see it again."

Iirc, it was around the time when they were debating what the aliens meant by "use weapon."

I should say that I don't think her second sight was any sort of skill or special gift that others didn't have, but rather something like an undeveloped natural capacity, that came alive, so to speak, in her encounter with the alien's language. It may well be that her linguistic abilities were directly related to it, in fact.

I don't think I understand what you mean by that. I don't think they are either premonitions or memories. ;-)

AMDG

Just skimming over this, I agree more with Janet: it's not second sight or premonition, but an ability which develops as a consequence of understanding the language. I think it begins with an undeveloped talent, but not of an ESP nature--it only has to do with her ability with languages. The aliens say they've come to offer a weapon/tool, and it's only after Louise has spent a lot of time with the language that they say "Louise has weapon/tool". I think that's the "gift" remark you're thinking of, Rob? That's as they're about to flee from the bomb, isn't it? Or maybe subsequent to that, when only one of the aliens appears? Not at the beginning of the encounter, anyway. (Well, of course, it couldn't be, because there's no communication at that point. Her natural linguistic talent enables her to grasp the language more quickly, as a result of which her "brain is rewired", which gives her the ability to see things at different points in time independently of where she is in time. Physicist Ian doesn't develop this at all.

I get that people on here like the 'pro-life' message. But aside from that, what's there to like about a movie one has to see several times before one has a clue what happened in it. I don't know why its the genre of science fiction which tends to this pretentiousness, but there it is.

Right, I was clear about what was going on--at least by the end of the film. I just wanted to see it again to see what it was like knowing what I knew the second time around. And to see what I had missed.

I did the same thing with True Grit--hardly sci-fi.

AMDG

Its a totally different thing revealing more details and more levels of meaning on every new viewing and having to be seem four times to get the basic plot straight

Just look at the discussion on this page. People were explaiming central plot points

"I don't think I understand what you mean by that. I don't think they are either premonitions or memories."

The film makes you believe that they're memories, that Louise is remembering all those events with Hannah. But as we find out, none of them has happened yet -- they're all in the future. It's when this penny drops that things begin to make sense. Otherwise, the presentation of those events as memories (which is obviously what we're supposed to believe they are) makes no narrative sense, or worse, is a sort of cheating -- the foisting of red herrings on a grand scale.

The friend that I saw the film with had already seen it once, but wanted to see it again knowing the basic conceit. He said that the penny dropped for him during his first viewing when at a point somewhat late in the film Louise asks, after one of her memories, who the little girl is. He reasoned that she would not forget her own daughter, esp. after all she had been through, so the only plausible explanation was instead that she hadn't had her child yet. Therefore, the memory wasn't a memory at all, but a glimpse into the future, and if it were true of that memory it must true of the others as well.

Hence, anytime you see her having a memory of Hannah, it's not a glimpse into the past but a glimpse into the future. That's the key that keeps the whole thing from being a hash of time slippages backwards and forwards.

From this angle the nature of her "gift" is relatively unimportant; what's important is that she possesses it. But its nature becomes important later in the story when she learns what it is and how to use it.

"From this angle the nature of her "gift" is relatively unimportant..." Yes, I was thinking that after the discussion yesterday. I mean, I think it's an interesting idea that the language more or less created the gift, but its impact in the story is the same either way.

I didn't really have a "penny drop" moment. Just a gradual dawning, as one piece after another fell into place. In fact it didn't really hit me until I was outside the theater that Ian was the husband who left.

I think people are still debating whether Decker in Blade Runner is a replicant or not.

Oh, well I agree with that, Rob.

I think people are still debating whether Decker in Blade Runner is a replicant or not.

Well, maybe we will find that out in the sequel?

AMDG

Good. I was wondering if I would be bored seeing it twice in 6 days, but I was just as engaged as I was the first time.

AMDG

I love Mulholland Dr!

Unfortunately, bringing up a film like Mulholland Dr. lessens my interest in Arrival. I just want to go home and re-watch Mulholland and think about the blue box.

I guess I'll have to watch Mulholland Dr. now that it's on Filmstruck.

AMDG

If you're wondering why I haven't said anything since this morning, it's because I was busy all day and then spent the evening watching Interstellar. It was a mostly interesting three hours, but...well, my reaction is a bit of a shrug, which seems sort of harsh for such a lavish production. It's big and spectacular and entertaining, but not something I'd want to see again. I like Arrival a whole lot better.

I suspect a lot of the science in Interstellar is completely ridiculous, but I don't know for sure. Planets orbiting a black hole instead of a sun?!?

I think Interstellar loses points primarily at the end, where it attempts to explain too much. Up till then I thought it was top notch. It does gain some of its lost points back at the very end, imo, but not enough to salvage things completely. I found it interesting that both films had as major themes the nature of time and the parent/childhood relationship, and I found some of the parent/child scenes in Interstellar quite moving.

Very good points, Rob. I do want to see it again, but will wait for the DVD.

Interstellar left me feeling depressed after the first time I watched it. Arrival had me feeling the opposite.

That's not to say that I didn't like Interstellar; I did.

Now I must see this Midnight Special movie, which I hadn't heard of until mentioned here.

I hadn't thought of that, Janet, but you're right. The voice-over would have been more whispery though. ;-)

Oh, I just saw your long comments, Rob.

Well, the weapon/gift is the language, because that is what they gave to everybody. Louise seems to be the one that was able to really assimilate it.

AMDG

When she talks to them for the first time and learns a bit. It seems to me that they are communicating with her in a way we don't see. We see what the humans are doing, and we pretty much get the idea of how that works. But maybe the aliens aren't just students or followers. Maybe they are teaching Louise in some way that is imperceptible to us.

AMDG

No, I agree with you. Like I said yesterday I don't believe that her "gift" is something innate and exclusive to her. I guess what I'm saying is that her ability to see the future isn't wholly dependent on her knowledge of the language in a sort of one-to-one correspondence. She starts seeing the future before she knows much about the language at all. It could be that she received the initial capacity when she touched the alien through the glass (it certainly did something to her) but the film doesn't make that clear.

Have a good retreat. I'm about to work on and I hope finish your 52 Saints post, so it should be in your emailbox when you get back.

Yes. I found most of them somewhat difficult, because there ended up being a lot to read and distill into 1000 or so words, plus saying something besides a rephrase of the basic bio. It was sort of like doing the Authors posts.

Haven't heard of either of them.

No doubt it's good but it looks like one of those things that could be kind of painful to watch.

I guess y'all are all planning to be standing in line Thursday to see the new Star Wars-related movie?

:-)

In the next Hobbit movie Bilbo's going to have a love interest.

In the next Hobbit movie Bilbo's going to have a love interest.

Oh well, then, I guess I'll have to move that up ahead of VotDT.

AMDG

I'll go see it, hoping it's enough of a spectacle to justify seeing it in a theater.

"It doesn't wallow." That's good.

Janet, I think it's going to be Scarlet Johansen in a sort of Wonder-Woman-style outfit. If that affects your priority...

Well, looking around to see if SJ was in the Hobbit movie or the Star Wars movie, I find that Denis Villenueve is the director of Blade Runner 2049, which makes me think I might want to see it after all.

AMDG

I haven't heard of it either, but at my house we hear them all the time.

AMDG

Sounds very intriguing.

This is making me think that we could do "52 Actors/Actresses" some time. Week One - Amy Adams.

Signs of an Arrival of a Transformation in the Philosophy of Time

Academic Philosophical article on the film Arrival

https://www.academia.edu/30971512/Signs_of_an_Arrival_of_a_Transformation_in_the_Philosophy_of_Time

I have a few academic friends who use Academia.edu to distribute their papers to interested parties. It's on the up and up.

I finally got to see Arrival, and have just read through these comments. I loved the movie; far better than Interstellar, for sure. A great sense of atmosphere, gorgeous to look at, and cunningly constructed. I loved the dreamy feel of the whole thing. This is my kind of science-fiction.

After this first viewing I came to the same general conclusion as the rest of you about the sequence of events. The one thing that didn't fit was that first set of "seeings" into the future, which I, naturally, first interpreted as memories. Since Louise hadn't yet met the aliens and hadn't yet begun to learn their language, it seemed a cheat to let her have such vision at that point in the film. But Rob, on his second viewing, picked up that the voiceover in that initial sequence positions it as "past-visions of end-of-film Louise", rather than "future-visions of start-of-film Louise". That, if true, gets Villeneuve off the hook for cheating.

A few things are still confusing me though.

One is the basic premise: that learning this alien language, in which thoughts are instantiated as wholes, rather than linearly, could impart a gift of seeing through time -- that is, seeing a temporal whole rather than only temporal events in sequence. In this the alien thought seems conceived of as akin to angelic thought: immediate, rather than deductive or discursive. But I don't see any implication, one way or another, for future sightedness. Angels don't know the future.

Also, the alien language seems clumsy. The pictograms indicate concepts, but, based on what I saw, no grammar. You would think it would at least be inflected, so that some relationship between the words would be indicated.

Also, the notion of future-sightedness is a dangerous one for dramatic purposes, because if one can see into the future then there must be a particular future to see, which suggests (and may imply) that our characters have no free will. Which, if true, rather undermines the emotional punch of Louise's decision to have a child. Was she fated to do as she did?

Finally, I'm puzzled about how all this works from the aliens' perspective. They came to earth to share this gift, because they, seeing the future, know that in 3000 years they will need the help of humanity. But this is getting close to one of those time paradoxes where the future has a causal influence on the past, even as the past causes the future. It's like a temporal palindrome, I suppose, but it makes my head hurt.

That said, this is a film I'd really like to see again, if only for the beauty of it. There were some really striking visuals.

I can't discuss it in a whole lot of detail because I know there was a lot I missed in one viewing, and it's been six or eight weeks. I'd like to see it again.

But: I didn't take seriously the idea that the language could somehow produce the ability to see outside of time. I just took it as a dramatic device, like warp drives and all that sort of paraphernalia required to make interstellar flight possible in sci-fi. Nor did I think much about the written language beyond the fact that it looked really cool.:-)

And yes it did raise the whole time-travel problem, and I usually object to time travel, but I guess I was more accepting here since there was no actual travel.

Speaking of which, at Janet's recommendation I watched the Netflix series Travelers, which is about a group of people sent from the future to change the course of history. It's not great but enjoyable--you get interested in the characters. The twist is that the future people are sent into the bodies of people about to die in the past, and have to pick up those lives in addition to doing what they were sent to do. So you get interested in that angle. One person for instance is sent into the body of a heroin addict and has to cope with that.

"I didn't take seriously the idea that the language could somehow produce the ability to see outside of time."

If you give credence to the idea that our language shapes our consciousness, then you can suspend disbelief enough to make the thing work, at least for the purpose of the film. I didn't really take it any further than that though.

"I also watched Mulholland Drive, and mostly enjoyed it but found some of it so troubling as to about outweigh the enjoyment."

When Lynch chooses to be troubling he can be very troubling indeed. But I think most often it's for a purpose. And "enjoy" is probably not a word I'd use related to his work, excepting Straight Story. I find his best work strange and beautiful and challenging; I wouldn't say I enjoy it, exactly, but I do love it.

By the way, Mac, I've got a couple friends asking about the 52 Movies complete list...

I know that with most science-fiction there comes a point at which one mustn`t push too hard, lest the whole thing crumble. I was just trying to find that point.

I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Arrival so much was that in addition to being a very "filmy" film -- in its art direction, cinematography, acting, and direction -- and its having genuine human feeling at its centre, it's also really nerdy. The whole movie is seriously preoccupied with something that most science-fiction -- think Star Trek or Star Wars -- simply glosses over: how to communicate with aliens. I like this about it.

A long time ago I heard someone describe SW as basically a Western set in space, and I'd mostly agree with that.

Yes, that's a good way of looking at Star Wars. I guess I don't really know much about those movies; I've only seen one of them.

I think the Western idea of Star Wars is interesting because Lucas got the name "jedi" from " Jidaigeki" movies. Seven Samurai was one and, of course, The Magnificent Seven came from that.

AMDG

The story itself isn't much like those, though.