Arrival 11/11/2016

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Deuce66, Aug 16, 2016.

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  1. Splungeworthy

    Splungeworthy Forum Rezidentura

    Thanks! Your explanations sound as plausible as any I've heard.
     
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  2. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    OK, I found an article that better explains all this. Scroll down to the section titled "The ending explained."

    Arrival's Ending Explained »
     
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  3. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    It was how he was sure she could be believed, that she knew something that he had never told anyone. Of course, this is circular - she knew because he had told her, and he told her because she knew. Unless it's a matter of multiple times streams branching and resolving at that moment. English cannot cope with the language of time. Actually, her experiences were more a matter of deja vu - seeing that which has not yet happened.
     
  4. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Thanks, Chris. Oh, and you can field the questions from here on. :)
     
  5. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Oh sure, you just want to see my head explode.
     
  6. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    I was going to say earlier that I don't want to end up like Stephen Hawking. :D
     
  7. You might have missed it or gone to the bathroom but the suggestion was that the soldiers listening to Rush kind of guy who inflames the soldiers. At point ne of the wives' of the soldiers speaks to him and states her same concern and, as I recall, says that they must do something about it. There's a sense of building paranoia on the the creatures and what the "weapon" might be but, as is pointed out earlier, weapon can be mistake in a tribal language as "gift"--and what the aliens give to her is both because it could be used to alter the future in ways that could hurt or benefit others or it could be used otherwise. In some ways it IS a weapon because what she sees will hurt her but it will also give joy. It's the uncertainty of Language where sometimes what we hear isn't what is truly said.

    As far as the general and his message there are a couple of things that come into play--although it's a paradox, her character flashes forward to help prevent a major crisis and gather the info she needs. The other option is that the aliens SHOW her something that COULD happen in the timeline and that gives hers the information she needs as a crucial moment.

    You can look at it either way. One is more logical while the other, like all time travel stories, is messy and there are paradoxes inherent in a nonlinear world.
     
  8. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    I'm not putting this in a spoiler because I don't think anything huge is revealed:

    In case this isn't clear to everyone here (and I didn't grasp this until yesterday), when Louise meets the general at the U.N. gathering, he already has read her book explaining the new language. So what he tells her about his wife is a test of the language, which Louise passes when she phones him.

    I bring this up because I didn't understand before yesterday that the general was "in on it." (Apologies if this was explained earlier in the thread.)
     
    wayneklein likes this.
  9. Good explanation. I also like how there are very subtle elements in the film that are not always picked up on.
     
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  10. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    I'm late here but I just got back from seeing the film. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
    This is how I interpreted the film. I might have missed something important so correct me if I am wrong.:
    Louise had "flashbacks" about her child/broken marriage during the early stages of her mission, so these were nothing to do with the gift of perception that she later obtained from the aliens in the fog. However, she did already have premonitions in life and her first husband left her because of that (telling him that she believed their daughter would die of cancer).
    These were obviously events from the past, otherwise she would have told the rest of the team that she was having these weird visions of a child/events in her life that had never happened and this could be something to do with contamination because of the contact with the alien vessel. No, she kept it to herself because she really was having flashbacks and not flash-forwards.
    When she finally got the "gift" she saw herself married to the scientist and having their future baby. I can't see her saying that she would want a baby which she knew was condemened to an early death with all the heartbreak that that would bring.
    Because she prevented either armageddon (or the fleeing of the aliens) and had cracked the language of the aliens, she became world famous. Her actions and its message of unilateral communication, tolerance and trust brought in a new era for humanity which would set them on the path to prepare for and be capable of helping the aliens when they need it, in 3000 years time.
    The general wasn't "in on it" at all. Louises' phone call (using the command center hot-line) to him, reciting his wife's dying words was enough for the general to understand that something extraordinary had happened at the US observation site. So he put the offensive on hold. Louise mentally leaped to the future to gather this important, world-changing information.
    That was my take anyway.
     
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  11. That's a pretty good interpretation of the material I should point out, however, that there would be no reason for her to tell the rest of the group for fear that she might be bumped from the mission.
     
  12. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Not so sure. I think that because of the gravity of what was happening (the possible destruction of humanity) she would have told all.

    How could she be having such vivid visions of the future before she had been given the "gift" (apart from simple feelings of foreboding about her daughter? - which is why her past husband left her)
     
  13. thegage

    thegage Forum Currency Nerd

    The movie's been out for a while, so I think we can safely discuss without full spoiler tags, but in any case this might be a mild spoiler: Clearly, her key visions are all about the future, not the past. She says nothing because she doesn't understand what is happening, and as noted doesn't want to be told to leave. It is also made clear that she goes forward into that future, even knowing what will ultimately happen, because she doesn't want to miss the joy that it will bring.

    John K.
     
  14. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    I don't agree. I don't think that anyone with any sense of humanity would have the selfishness to let things run their course, with so much pain at stake, especially the death of ones daughter and the car crash of divorce. They were flashBACKS before the aliens gave her the gift of future vision (as opposed to simple bad feelings about the future - which messed up her first marriage).
     
  15. Hightops

    Hightops Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bay Area, Ca
    If she wasn't aware of what the future held for her child, why was future husband angry with her (& left)?
     
  16. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Why do you say she wasn't aware of what the future held for her child?
     
  17. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    The visions that many of you think are flashbacks and not flash-forwards -- at what point in the movie do those occur? Because if they're the ones that occur at the outset, keep in mind that Louise is narrating the story at some future point, meaning she already has access to those visions. So the fact that we're seeing the child at the outset does not mean Louise is having visions before the aliens arrive.
     
  18. thegage

    thegage Forum Currency Nerd

  19. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    That article is wrong. She was having visions of the child from the very beginning of the film, before getting anywhere near understanding the language, so it was obviously memories of her dead child.
    Later, when she began to learn the alien symbols, she was able to feed her past self and answer a question her daughter asked her to help with her homework. So the present Louise fed knowledge back to her younger self.
     
  20. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Once again, the only glimpse we get of Hannah before Louise starts learning the alien language is during the voiceover narration at the beginning. It is not a vision Louise is having before the aliens arrive, but rather her "thoughts" as she speaks to us at the beginning -- and it's obvious from her words that it's happening at some future point and with the knowledge she has acquired from the events in the film. (Also, I'm sure the filmmakers are aiming to throw us off with those early shots of Hannah.)
     
  21. thegage

    thegage Forum Currency Nerd

    Well, it's certainly an interpretation, but different from pretty much every other one, which all seem to agree that it is the future--after all it's Louise and Ian's child--though accessed in a non-linear way:

    Arrival's Ending Explained »
    Explaining the Arrival Ending »
    How do we interpret Louise's memories in Arrival? »
    How the short story that inspired Arrival helps us interpret the film’s major twist »

    etc.
     
  22. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Yeah, I know. I must have it all wrong. I remembered this afternooon that Louis had a vision of the child and her drawing of Mummy and Daddy talking to the animals, with a little bird cage in front of them. Then there was the vision of the plasticine figures facing an alien. I also get now why Ian left her in the future because she agreed to have a baby when she knew its destiny.
    So in fact Louise had visions even before she fully aquired the gift of future memories in the foggy octopus's garden. It's because of that ability that she was the only human at one of the 12 contact points who connected with the aliens.
     
  23. Hightops

    Hightops Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bay Area, Ca
    I'm not. I believe her husband is angry with her for entering into their marriage without informing him of what the future held.
     
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  24. Trashman

    Trashman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Who said that the aliens traveled to the past? They have the ability to see the future, just like Louise eventually does, but nowhere in the film does it say the aliens actually traveled through time.
     
  25. Freedom Rider

    Freedom Rider Senior Member

    Location:
    Russia
    Saw this the other day, and wow, what a letdown. Another pseudo-profound, emotionally overblown movie that tries too much to impress the viewer with a super smart concept/twist but fails miserably (at least in my case). But the problem is, even the concept itself wasn't all that complex or effective - you could see it coming a mile off. It just made no impression on me whatsoever - none. What I saw was just a pretty-looking, sappy mix of melodrama and sci-fi, with a half-baked script, pedestrian acting and clichés galore. Just my honest and very humble opinion.
     
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