Arrival

This film about 12 Alien ships arriving at earth and their language being studied is excellent. Available presently on Netflix and Amazon and Hulu. You should watch it.

I'll go ahead a spoil the whole thing for you. What the heck.

It doesn't matter. The whole point of the movie is that time is actually blended. Everything occurs at once while humans experience it point to point. Louise, the heroine learns through the film that although her daughter died, her life continues and extends well beyond her lifetime as measured. Louise comports with her daughter throughout the film. So if you're one with the film then you've seen it already.




The opening sequence rapidly goes through a girl's life with her mother, as a child playing horsey and tickle guns, as a young adult, "I hate you," then as young adult in hospital. She dies.

So that's that. We shouldn't see any more of the girl except in flashback scenes.

But no. The girl is integral to the present and to the future in the film. She is an active character, not just a recalled one.

Next scene the woman is teaching Portuguese language at university to a very sparse theater when an emergency alarm sounds off and classes are canceled. Large alien ships have taken up space at twelve places around the world.

Right off there are a couple of linguistic oddities presented that captured viewers imaginations. They've researched this online so much that the pages acknowledge the questions all come from this movie. In one scene the Army general is enlisting Louise for joining the American team. He wants her to stay put and she insists she must go there for direct interaction. He thinks she just wants a joy ride because everyone wants to get close. He tells her he'll go speak to a colleague at Berkley. She said, "Be sure to ask him for the Sanskrit word and translation for 'war'."

That turns out to be "a desire for more cows."

That scene is trying to inculcate there is more to translation than straight transliteration. There are more concepts for war; dispute, aggression, fight, disagreement, call to arms, and so forth. Just as in Sanskrit you'll see more than just cows. This is how translators can identify something that's been run through Google translate.

Not to eat. Cows are holy. Everyone must donate at lest one cow in their life. A soldier going to war must have this taken care of, thus a desire for more cows.

In another scene the General is giving Louise a hard time about their approach to learning the alien language. To drive her point she relates the story of Captain Cook asking the aborigines their word for kangaroo. They said kangaroo meaning "I don't understand you." The General leaves. Her cohort says, "That's a pretty cool story." Louise answers, "It's a lie."

The actual etymology is unclear. The best linguist can do is the word comes from the Guugu Yimidhirr, originally gangurru.

Now those two things are widely known because of this movie.

Learning the alien language changes the way that your brain works. Their language blends time. As Louise is learning the language, the film flashes back to her daughter. There are clues in these memories that bear on the present and future. This isn't apparent as you watch it because they appear as ordinary flashback scenes, but they're integral to the story. Like the language Louise is learning, her daughter's life has no real beginning and end. Louise comes to believe that her daughter is not actually dead because she's so real and alive in the present. When Louise snaps back to consciousness the viewer doesn't know for sure if the previous scene was in the present, a memory, or a dream.

One of the two aliens she's communicating with dies. It's urgent she make immediate progress because the project is closing due to what happened with the Chinese team and teams that China influenced. The world is near war, and the Americans must vacate the area of the alien ship. She abandons the abandonment and approaches the ship. It sends out a transport ship the shape of a bullet, and still very large. She enters the smaller transporter and communes with the alien. This meeting is critical as everything is falling apart quickly. She asks the surviving alien "Why are you here?" The alien answers "To help humans."Louise asks, "What do you want?" The alien answers, "In 3,000 years we will ask for help from humans." Louise asks, "How can you know the future?" The alien answers, "Louise has the weapon." Louise understands when they say weapon they're trying to convey "tool."

The other teams blew their opening trials at communication. None were nearly as good as Louise at understanding the possible traps. They brought games, Go, Mahjong, chess, that have winners and losers similar to war. Another team's approach was math because mathematicians consider their language universal, and it is on earth, while it's still its own self-contained language. Aliens could speak an entirely different math. As the ancient Egyptians spoke an entirely different math. Another team with another alien ship used music but that's only good when you hear the same wavelengths. Another team working with another Alien ship using sign language. Other language used logograms.

Louise insisted that learning to speak a language and write a language at the same time is faster than learning them separately. Her approach is through writing. The team learned very quickly there is no relation between what the Aliens speak and what they write. Their written language is not based on their vocalized language.

As the film progresses these flashbacks occur with increased frequency so that the scenes blend one to the other so viewers might be confused about the daughter being alive or what. Scenes in the past are presented as scenes in the present. Because they are in the present. The present affects the memories in the past. And the present affects the future. Until finally the critical scenes are blended so exquisitely that the result is nothing short of cinematographic masterpiece.

Louise is in isolated Montana, her whole alien ship team is departing. The world is prepared to wage war on the alien ships. Louise has a powerfully clear memory involving her daughter that's infused with extra meaning in its recollection and an intuition about the unfathomable future. She opens a box of books and pulls one out. She wrote it. But not in the present. Dedicated to her daughter. She sees that she wrote a book that teaches the alien language. She sees herself at University with a full theater of students this time, and that causes her to steal the Commanders SATCOM devise in the confusion of everyone packing up and leaving and running off to use it to dial up the leader of the Chinese team who declared war on the Aliens. Simultaneously she's at a diplomatic reception a year and a half in the future and that same Chinese guy approaches her and humbly with humility he tells her although he was invited by high ranking officials his real reason for coming was to meet her.

Louise is played beautifully by Amy Adams. She's just tremendous throughout. In this scene she's dolled up elegantly. She manages playing a woman emotionally damaged by divorce and the loss of her child, able professional, the best at her expertise, and humbly constantly confused the whole time. She makes it look like she's struggling for comprehension throughout the whole film without a trace of arrogance in her. Nothing makes sense scene to scene and it's a real struggle for her putting it together as it comes.

The Chinese General tells Louise he doesn't know how her mind works but he knows it's important he meet her. "Why?" She asks. "Because you did something nobody else could do, even my superior." She asks, "What?" He answers, "You changed my mind."

"How?"

"Eighteen months ago. You told me my wife's dying words."

"I called you?"

    "Yes, you did."

"I don't even have your number."

The Chinese general holds out his tiny cellphone and shows her."

Now in the future she has his number, only now can she contact him. Back then in Montana as the American commander's men are closing on her traitorously using his phone, she uses the number and speaks to the Chinese General relaying to him what he's whispering into her ear at the same time and eighteen months in the future simultaneously.

Back then in the present the Chinese general changes his mind because Louise blew him away by knowing what his dying wife said, but there is no need for the film to show that. Suffice to show that war was averted and the humans consolidated their 12 separate knowledge bases into comprehension of the Alien language that gave them access to time-blending and to comprehending the future. Alien language was their weapon, their tool, that they gave humans.

Her husband returns to her. The end.

The aliens look like giant squid.

Their arms are reticulated with apparent bones. They have seven legs and you don't see until the end that their bodies on top of their legs are massive. A transparent barrier separates them from the humans on their ship. They seem to be moving through liquid, as squid do.

When they hold up their arms then there are seven fingers like octopus arms. When they pull away their arms the fingers close together to form points. They seem to tip-toe around on these points. They squirt ink out of their hands that forms a smokey cloud as octopuses do. Except the ink cloud congeals into a circle with scraggly edges and that is their written language.

human

Their ship is like interior of Egyptian pyramids. Entered through the bottom by a regular mobile elevating platform to the inside of a long vertical narrow antechamber where there is no gravity. They walk up the walls weightless into a larger chamber divided with transparent material. The humans on one side with atmosphere and the aliens on the other side in their murky fluid. 

Their ships are ovate but flattened like a soft-boiled egg that's been cut in half lengthwise. Huge and black. We don't see them arriving. They're just positioned in the sky among the clouds. The ship in Montana is positioned next to rolling cloud bank that is pouring somewhat like an ocean wave. It's a very beautiful scene. When the ships leave they simply disappear and clouds replace their shape as if they disappeared into time as much as they disappeared from space. 

This is a fantastic film. The essence of a short story, The Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang. Quite a lot has been written about the alien language. The wife of the director, I think, at any rate someone important to the film, entered some kind of contest and her inspiration for their circular written language was the seashore and that inspiration is clear in the film.

Linguists love this film. They discuss it all over the place. They dispute its chief premise that your language determines how you think. This item on Slate, for example. 

From my own point of view I would say language influences the way that you think more so than determines the way that you think. 

For example, if Spanish is your first language I don't think it's impossible to cease looking at everything in terms of gender. 

Although, even if the Spanish speaker learns English they still might consider the English moon feminine and the English sun masculine even though English doesn't demand it.

The discussion forced me to recall one of the most inflexible arguments I ever had with Dr. Fred. I told him that language changes the way that you think. Language helps you think. As you learn new words you also learn concepts and these concepts are used as pathways for thinking. He insisted that is not so. 

And I couldn't believe that he'd disagree with me. He should just accept what I'm telling him. Plus he only spoke one language. Except for the language of medicine.  His medical language helped him think. Didn't he recognize that? 

I told him gently and tenderly as possible, STOP BEING SUCH A  FUCKING DUMBASS FRED, I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. GODDAMNIT RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!

I continued, when I learned 1,000 new words for the GMAT they immediately provided new pathways for thinking. I felt an acceleration right there. The new words formed the avenues that my brain used to think things. They are the stepping stones of thought, and repeated they're reinforced to highways for thinking. While additional languages dug subways and overlaid els through that. After having all those new useful words I couldn't imagine thinking clearly without them.

But nothing I said changed his opinion. He persisted in insisting that whatever you would think you'd still think no matter how deprived your language. You'd work around your deficiency with substitute language. 

But I didn't despair. Because with Fred and with others of his tribe I realized very young they never conceded to anything in argument. It's a distinctly American trait. I'd lose all the arguments by their resolute force. And then just a few weeks later I'd hear my own points expressed back to me and in my own unique arrangement of words because what I said really did sink in back there and then, and internalized such they're expressed as original, although they're loathe to admit any such thing from me. Their egos never allowed that.

But Fred died before that could happen this time.