Arrival: Opinion on the Movie

The first time I saw the film “Arrival”, I was utterly shocked and impressed. So, the film is pretty much concentrated on language communication, and the audience saw how the main character of the picture Louise Banks started to understand the language of the aliens. She started to decode their means of communication through a written form. The aliens or the “heptapods” as they were called by the scientists in the movie, used rather complex form of writing. Louise Banks, a linguist sent inside one of the crafts to interpret the visitors' words, a set of mysterious inky and circular "logograms" that the tentacled creatures can expel onto a frosty glass wall. When I thought deeply about their written language, the thing that hit me was the fact that one must have some knowledge about the future in order to pick right proportions for creating such complicated circles. I think the circular form of writing can also represent eternity, as the only eternal thing on earth is time. Over time, as Louise gets deeper in the alien language, she starts to see visions of her life, eventually having a full knowledge of her faith, especially about her daughter’s death. Finally, there’s the arrival of coming to this knowledge and having to act upon it. It can open up the discussion of freewill and whether knowing your future makes you predestined if you can’t change it. In fact, the point of the film is make you ask yourself if we all had to come together for the greater good, would we? If there’s a chance we can talk things out, should we? Many ask the question would you like to know when or how you die, but not many ask if you’d like to know how you’d live. Because as we see in the movie even though Louis knows that her daughter will die from cancer, she also knows the years of love she wouldn’t give up and knows that her arrival is more important than her departure.