movie: Arrival

Incidentally, the friend who borrowed "Arrival" from me returned it today. He said he still couldn't figure out what was going on, or why I found it so emotional.

I asked, did you place the prologue in context, where she's having memories of a child she has not yet birthed?

He said no. He thought she'd had a child that died, before the aliens landed. She'd been married and divorced before the story started.

I said no, these were future memories she gleaned from learning Haptapod B, learning to think non-linearly, learning to see her entire lifetime in one continuous reel. And that's why the prologue is so powerful, because in the future, when she's raising her daughter and playing with her at the cabin, SHE ALREADY KNOWS Hannah will dies tragically young (in the book it's a hiking accident, in the movie it's cancer). Yet she is still able to share this joy with Hannah, still able to get pregnant with Hannah, still able to marry Ian KNOWING what the fuuture holds.

Oh, he said. Oh. OHHHH. I GET IT! Oh my god. That changes everything!

NoCoPilot wrote:

Avoidance of pain doesn't make him an asshole... although to deny Hannah -- who doesn't even exist yet --  her 16 good years does seem kind of selfish.  But then, men always have been more selfish than women, it's in our biology.  

Ian, remember, cannot see the future.  To him, there is no "denying Hannah 16 good years" because Hannah does not exist yet.  He'd rather spare himself the pain of losing her, and spare Hannah the pain of dying young by never bringing her into the world in the first place.

But Louise can see the future.  She sees the joy and discovery that Hannah experiences, and to her Hannah is a real person even before she is conceived.  The future she has seen includes Hannah, so it is inconceivable (bad pun) that Hannah will not be born.

Ian and Louise are living in two different timelines.  His is linear, advancing one-day-at-a-time.  Hers is complete from start-to-finish, and can be viewed as a whole lifetime ahead of her that she is moving forward to bring into existence and inhabit. One of the first lines in the movie, that goes by without you having any idea of its impact, is something like, "If you could change anything in your life, would you?"

Only later, on repeated viewings, do you realize that people who think in Heptapod B would answer, "Of course not. It's what happened in my life."

But more than 'just' being what happens in our lives, we need those very experiences to create the self that responds to the varied situations.  So her past, whatever that was, was equally important for the creating of the receptive and intuitive self.  All of her/our free choices of how we perceive our experiences, made her husband him, and her, her. Me, me. You, you. Them, messed up.

Pulled out this gem again to view after 2-1/2 years, and it still left me weeping. What a masterpiece of understatement.

I have ordered "Incendies," Villenueve's previous movie and the one they sent Ted Chiang, the author of "The Story of Your Life," to sell him on having Villanueve adapt his story. Have no idea what it'll be like, but that's one hell of a recommendation.

Been looking into Villanueve's other films. Most of them won awards. Most of them sound very intelligently assembled.

But most of them deal with drug smuggling, child kidnapping, drug cartels, crooked cops, revenge and betrayal. In other words, dark dark stuff. I really don't care how clever a film is if it gives me nightmares.

I played the fabulous soundtrack to Arrival yesterday, and a couple days ago I was annoyed at a mention I read of Arrival, where the reviewer said Louise experienced "time travel."  Um, not really — that misunderstands the whole point of the movie.

So I pulled it out and rewatched it.  Got all choked up again.  The subtle philosophies and emotional bombs embedded in that film are just incredible.  Every time I watch it, it gets exponentially more powerful.

Might be my favorite film in the whole world now.