30 for 30 — 2016: "Arrival"
"Despite knowing the journey...and where it leads...I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it."
What’s this all about? I turned 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m watching one movie a day for 30 days and spending 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2016. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
Most movies about extraterrestrials visiting earth operate out of a place of fear. What will we do when the aliens attack? What would they want with us? How will we defend ourselves against them? Is our military prepared to defend us from that threat?
What “Arrival” presupposes is…what if the aliens are good and just want to help us?
Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 adaptation of Ted Chiang’s 1998 short story “Story of Your Life” came out three days after Donald Trump won the American presidential election following a campaign rooted in false, shameless talking points and a massive fear of the other. Despite growing conservative movements during the Obama administration, most pundits agreed Hillary Clinton would win the election by a landslide, ensuring a Democrat would keep the White House for another four years. Nov. 8, 2016 was a watershed moment in American politics that proved none of us really understood each other, and none of us really wanted to, either. Why bother, when it’s easier to burrow deeper into your own echo chambers and build up your own tribe?
“Arrival” is all about growing that communication and shattering those tribes. It’s also about determinism and the intricacies of language — specifically, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that the structure and culture of the language one speaks determines one’s worldview. The theory has been debated by linguists for centuries on just how true it is, but it’s an interesting thought experiment.
For instance, English sentences have to have a subject, a predicate and a definite end. As such, you could make the argument that most Western-world English speakers view the world through a purposeful, cause→effect view with a beginning, middle, and end. But what if a language and its symbols didn’t operate that way? What would happen to that species?
That’s what linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is trying to find out. She is called in by the military to make first contact with an alien species that suddenly landed on earth. Called Heptapods, the 12 of them are here to help humanity because their species will need help at some point in the future; their language is a series of palindromes and circular phrases that cause Louise to experience what the audience at first thinks are flashbacks to the death of her 12-year-old daughter. We later learn that due to her involvement with the aliens, Louise is actually experiencing premonitions, not flashbacks; her daughter has yet to be born.
The moment this realization hits isn’t a twist for the audience, exactly; all the clues were there, we just weren't looking at them the right way. Similarly, in the short story, Chiang subtly but deliberately changes the tense from Louise speaking to her daughter in second person future to second person past and present as a way to signify the time jumps. Once I realized what he was doing in the story, it warmed my word nerd heart.
This realization is what causes Louise to crack the code that the aliens’ language is a tool, a weapon and a guide meant to unite the world. The message is scattered throughout the 12 alien spaceships, and humanity has to find the whole message in order to decipher it. Louise is able to use her new language skills to convince another world leader to stop an attack on the Heptapods and unite the world.
That’s more than just a plot device, though. Louise’s realization that she's having premonitions of a daughter she has never met yet coincides with the audience’s realization that what we’ve been seeing is itself a palindrome — the movie begins and ends with footage of Louise’s daughter, but by the end, we’re watching that same footage through a different lens — and forms the emotional crux of the movie. If you knew the end result of a decision would bring you pain and suffering, but knew that the in between would be full of love and life, would you still make that decision? Isn’t that what we all do when we take a chance on a new relationship, or a new choice?
By rewiring the way she looks at the world, Louise rewires how she interacts with the world and how she moves through it. And it’s all set to a moving section of Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” a beautiful piece of music that’s been overplayed in movies before but its perfectly here. I’ve rewatched this movie more times than I can count since its release, and it only gets better and more relevant as it ages. For my money, it’s the best science fiction film of the last 10 years, easily. I wish more sci-fi films would take the “aliens might be good” approach. Maybe we’d learn something.
Up next: The sci-fi writing continues with one of my favorite “Star Wars” movies. We’re talking all about 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” so plan any outrage accordingly.
Letter of Recommendation
While we’re talking about the power of language, allow me to plug one of the most interesting books I’ve read all year: “Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism,” by Amanda Montell. It’s a great deep dive into how every "cult"- from Jonestown to SoulCycle to your own workplace- uses language and jargon as its primary tool.
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