How to make language interesting
Released in 2016, Denis Villeneuve's Arrival is one of my favourite movies of all time. So much of today's films are all over the place, so much so that the audiences have to exert themselves to compensate for a lack of focus. In this way, Arrival is a perfect response to those bad movies, because everything they do wrong, Arrival does it right. It was so refreshing for me to watch a filmmaker, completely in command of the craft take me on a unique and emotional journey, which I can truly say: "I had never witnessed before". Not only is it inventive, but it is also is a beautiful story about human connections, empathy and most of all, something which affects all of us, language.
So I decided to take a deep dive and find out why exactly is it, that I have been so enamoured with this film and in doing so, find out the true meaning behind Arrival.
Synopsis:
12 unidentified objects have landed up on 12 different locations on the Earth, out of nowhere. These humongous and peculiar looking things have thrown the governments of the world into a frenzy, grasping for answers. The US military enlists the help of an expert linguist, Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) for the alien site in Montana. Her, along with famed physicist, Ian Donelly (Jeremy Renner) and their team of experts are tasked to communicate with the aliens and identify their purpose of coming to Earth. However, as the process goes on, Louise realizes that the written language adopted by the Heptapods is non-linear, unlike any other human language. And as she starts to learn their way of communication, she begins to have memories she has never experienced before.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Kuleshov Effect
The first couple of scenes is a brilliant example of the Kuleshov Effect in practice. It means that the viewer derives meaning from a scene with two sequential shots, which Hitchock illustrated by turning a kindly gentleman into a pervert by just changing up the shot that followed his close-ups.
The director of Arrival does the same thing but on a scene level wherein scene one is a montage of Louise’s life with her daughter and her young death, followed up by a shot of her walking through the hallway of the university she teaches in. Because of the tragedy we witness in the first scene and our assumption that the film’s plot is a linear one, we read Louise’s disinterest as a sign of her mourning and her dry demeanour as a consequence of her deep heartache. It is not until the end of the movie that we realize that the flashback was actually a flashforward and that Louise was just a blank slate, that we assigned meaning to.
Talking Circles
Whereas we humans communicate in a line, using words to communicate our thoughts moving from beginning to end. The Heptapods communicate in a circle, with neither a beginning nor an ending. Which means they also differ from humans and how we perceive time. The human written line reflects how we comprehend time, with every passing moment, experienced one after the other. Just like how we see, understand and derive meaning from words written on a piece of paper, the same goes with our perception of time, it goes straight.
However, the complete wholeness of the Heptapod circle indicates that for them, past present and the future are all equally known and/or remembered. And this is what Louise comes to experience as she begins to learn their language. At first, she starts experiencing the memories of her daughter’s life and death. But as she immerses herself in their language, it is revealed that the past which was shown at the beginning of the film, is in fact the future. Louise now realizes that she remembers her future as if it was her past. With the help of Heptapod’s language, Louise is able to transcend the arrow of time and experience the wholeness of her life even as she is living out her present. The film’s plot is circular, coming full circle at the end when Louise chooses to embrace all the joys and sorrows that come with life and the film ends with the same shot it opened with.
But this sci-fi element is not to be taken as literally as much as it’s figurative value. The greatest Sci-fi films, in my opinion, are the ones that don’t focus on the sci-fi element itself, but use it to hold a mirror towards society and tell a human story which wouldn’t have been as engaging if it were not done with the coating of an alien invasion. In Arrival, the invasion of an alien race is an integral part of the film, yes, but that is a mere tool, a MacGuffin in the grand scheme of things, used by the makers to tell a much personal story.
The film showcases the emergent need for us to be one whole instead of just being a part of the whole. One of the ways it showcases that is by creating an international crisis situation when the Heptapods arrive. Even though Louise is dealing with one Heptapod ship, there are 12 different ships scattered across different nations and all the countries decide to share the knowledge to form a collective of information.
But when the response “Offer Weapon” is delivered; panic ensues. This response is equated as being a hostile one, and all the nations disconnect with one another. Earth’s reaction to the Heptapod message is tacked on with the past experience of invasions throughout human history, and the planet decides to formulate a counter-attack on the aliens, a response to a possible invasion.
To fully understand the true meaning of the message, Louise needs more information. She returns to the ship and asks to receive what they are offering. And in this symbolic moment, Louise is offered to write in their language, which gives her more intense flashes of memories with her daughter and the cloud of circular symbols appear on the screen.
Clouds
If you observe carefully, clouds are everywhere in the film, the environment the Heptapods are kept in, in most of the establishing shots of their ships, and even the end credit is shrouded by clouds. Clouds are nothing but drops of water suspended in the sky with plenty of space between each particle.
This points to the space between the symbols of time in the cloud, which Ian promptly finds out is in fact, 1/12. The reasons why they have divided the ships among 12 countries is because to actually understand the reason for their arrival, humans need to work together and form a collective pool of knowledge.
And yet, it doesn’t only have to do with unifying the nations. The number 12 is also representative of the 5-minute gaps in a clock, a symbol of time. Just as the nations must come together to understand the message, Louise must piece together all the periods of time in her life, in order to fully understand the alien language.
Leading into the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, a big inspiration for the film, which states that the language you speak determines the way you perceive everything around you. By learning a new language you can basically rewire your brain and look at things a lot differently. Learning the alien language, Louise also gains an insight into how the Heptapods perceive everything, including time. Their ability to view life in all its phases at once is something which is passed onto Louise through the medium of language.
The Choice
In the book “Story Of Your Life”, which Arrival is the on-screen adaptation of, Louise’s daughter Hannah dies at a much older age in a rock-climbing accident. But in the film, Hannah dies in her adolescence due to an incurable disease. But why was this particular change made?
The main reason is to make sure that the protagonist’s choice matters. In the short story, Louise’s character arc is to realize that the universe is deterministic and to embrace the fact that she can’t avoid the inevitable. Louise has to have the choice to change the future in order for her to choose to have Hannah. And for this choice to have meaning, Hannah can’t die from something preventable, like a rock-climbing accident, because Louise would just stop her from rock climbing.
By changing the story so that Hanna dies from a disease, Louise’s character is able to choose the love of her child, knowing full well the loss that will come as a result of it. It is the same reason why her husband left her, she knew that her daughter would die even before she got married to Ian. But she still chose to go ahead with the plan the universe had for her because she would rather lose her daughter and keep her loving memories intact, than not have her exist at all.
A Space Odyssey
The shell resembles the famous monolith that appears in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey, which explores the perils and possibilities of technology and progress. But here, instead of the sharp angles of Kubrick’s towering and frightening black rectangle, the shell’s edges are rounded. Whereas the monolith warns us of the nightmarish possibilities of technological advancements, Arrival wants to use it to explore the positive and warmer aspects as well.
With its theme of communicating with an alien species, the film is responding to the paranoia and fear humans have for each other. We are all afraid of the unknown, lacking prior knowledge and the absence of control over the outcome scares the shit out of us. But the film is telling us to take a chance, that instead of jumping to conclusions we should look at the context, understand the message and then start thinking about a response. The aliens did not come with harmful intent. In fact, they came to offer us a gift. It was our experience with humans that influenced our response towards aliens.
Louise’s book, The Universal Language, that is revealed at the end suggests that through the Heptapod mindset, humanity is not only learning a new language, we are also learning a new state of being. A being which is not afraid of the unknown but optimistic about the potential of what we can still learn and discover if we are open to what and who, we don’t yet know.
Arrival
No other art form is able to fix time as cinema does. Therefore what is film? It is a mosaic made with time. - Andrei Tarkovsky
The Language of Arrival is the language of film. As I stated before, the best Sci-fi films are the ones that are interested in telling a human story about societal issues, rather than a surface level spectacle. Films are a medium for self-reflection, a way to say a thing so profound, that would otherwise be meaningless if the medium had changed. No wonder the inside of the Shell looked like a movie theatre.
This is the reason why it is one of my favourite films of all time. Arrival isn’t just a response to bad movies, it's also an active exploration into what makes a movie great. It explores the kind of unique perspective a film can gift to the filmgoer, like a language gifted by aliens and what kind of brand new world that perspective allows us to see.
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