Exploring Denis Villeneueve’s Arrival

By: Keaton Marcus

COLLISONS OF PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE:

The movie, released in 2016, didn’t reveal much when the trailers were dropped, creating a mystery of a film that led audiences to believe that it was some sort of mix between an all-out alien invasion thriller and a film about communication between humans and alien languages. While in a very basic way describing it as this wouldn’t be incorrect, it is still far more than simply a hybrid between two distinctive genres. From the beginning where it depicts Dr. Louise Banks’ memory of her daughter growing up and eventually dying of cancer, audiences realize that this was going to draw far deeper emotionally than we expected. With repeat viewings (I’ve seen this four times), the director has left little clues for us to pick up on something more than what is shown on the surface. It can be as little a touch as the style of how the spaceship is balanced to something as massive as figuring out the alien’s way of communication. If one simply peels the onion little by little on each detail and stylistic choice, you will discover a whole new world of cinematic magic.

As Louise finds her role to perform as a linguist to decipher the alien’s language, she finds a major difference between our language and theirs. We communicate in sentences, whilst they communicate in circles, expressing their thoughts all in one instance. This also means that the Heptapods (aliens) differ in how they not only language, but time. As humanity writes and talks, it matches the way we see time passing. Experiencing every single moment one after the other in slow, methodical succession as each word comes out of our minds. This concept becomes truly intriguing when we take in the parts of our own lives into it. Our past is, obviously, already known despite some flaws in memory, the present is becoming known at every moment, and the future is a vast world of unpredictability, slowly waiting to become apart of our present and past. On the other hand, the Heptapods communicate in circles, meaning that their perception of past, present and future is all the same, equally known and remembered. At first, Louise reminisces of her daughter’s life and death, but then an idea called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis comes into consideration.

THE MAGIC OF THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS:

This theory principally explains that if you immerse yourself in learning a foreign language enough, you can literally rewire your brain. It sounds like utter drivel, but it actually works towards this film’s benefit. In other words, the language you speak equals how you think. Mysterious, am I right? That your brain could actually be hardwired differently depending on the language you speak. Not only this, but it can also change your perception, or how you see everything. However, as she continues to learn the circle language, the movie makes it clear that the past, or Louise’s memories of her daughter, is actually the future. I’ll talk about how emotionally devastating this realization is later, but just take a second to think about this. The future is now remembered as much as her past, and it’s only through this new language, this Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that she realizes this. With the Heptapods’ language, Louise has learned to transcend the arrow of time that we all live in. This arrow of time is basically just living life in a normal way, slowly catapulting towards inevitable death. Remembering the past, living the present, and trying to predict the future. Transcending it means you have broke free of every day life, and past, present and future have collided in one beautifully indecipherable yet completely understandable explosion of time. Like the alien’s language, the film’s storytelling is circular instead of linear, coming to a full close at the end. When she hugs Jeremy Renner’s character at the finale, it represents her choosing to embrace the joys and sorrows of the life she knows will live.

THE PAIN OF KNOWLEDGE:

Another thing that becomes truly apparent while drawing deep on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is how depressing and emotionally painful it is to live it. Louise may have saved the aliens from being wrongfully attacked by humanity, but she forgot her own mental well-being. All the memories of her daughter’s birth, life and tragic young death coupled with her husband leaving her to live out her sorrows alone are all things that will happen in her future. She has to go through life knowing that her daughter will die of cancer, and the man she loves (who we find out is Jeremy Renner’s character), leaves them both. Just thinking about how all the joys and beauty of being a mother will be sucked out by the pain of knowledge is tragic to think about, and it proves once again how Denis Villeneuve uses heartbreaking material in a subtle way that isn’t necessarily easy to decipher. People have criticized his films for being emotionless (especially Blade Runner 2049), but simply because you have to crack the puzzle to find the true heartbreak in Arrival or his other masterpieces doesn’t mean there isn’t any. This is a beautiful film, and I’m not just talking about the cinematography or visual effects, but the feelings this makes you evoke is profound if you look deep enough

FORESHADOWING OF THE CIRCULAR (THE HERMENEUTIC CIRCLE)

Another aspect that this movie nails is the foreshadowing of the immense change that will come in Louise’s life. Watching the film on first viewing, seeing Louise walk down a circular hallway doesn’t really mean anything, but on second viewing, it is juxtaposed with a previous shot of Louise walking in a straight line. It foreshadows the way she will eventually think in the future, utterly aligned with the alien’s thoughts. By the end of the film, just like the main character, audiences too have come to see Arrival as Louise has come to see her life. It’s only on a re-watch in which we experience the true significance and beauty of each and every moment. The language of the Heptapods represents the full circle that this movie has come before the end credits, key to understanding the film’s underlying themes of meaning and interpretation.

Philosophers refer to this as the Hermeneutic Circle (I had to look up the definition of this), which explains that the whole defines the parts as the parts define the whole. Oh yeah, we’re getting super philosophical here. Part and whole are working together to form the true meaning of any sort of text. This basically means that to understand a specific part of something, you must figure out the whole before. The main conflict in the story of this movie, which is questioning the purpose of the Heptapod’s arrival, creates a crisis that solidifies this theory. Although primarily it focuses on Louise’s interactions with one singular ship, the larger conflict surrounds what to do with the total of 12 Heptapod ships located in random places around the globe. This leads the 12 nations in which the ships landed in to collaborate and share progress with each other. However, much to the distaste to many countries, when enough of their language is learned to ask their purpose on Earth, their response was translated to “offer weapon.” The Heptapod’s ultimate sign for true purpose is represented through past human experiences. This specifically relates to Louise’s “memories”. In a powerfully metaphorical and climactic moment, Louise is actually invited to write with their language on the glass screen that separates them from the aliens, which causes her to experience rapid flashes of more memory before a cloud of signs suddenly erupts.

LANGUAGE IS THE LIMIT:

As I mentioned right before, a cloud of signs erupts directly after Louise experiences flashes of these new memories. If you payed a little attention, you may notice that clouds are a visual motif in the movie, or imagery that keeps repeating itself throughout the film. After Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner analyze the new burst of data they received, it’s found out that the empty (incomplete) space reveals the incompleteness of Louise’s knowledge of their language. The positions of the ships are in fact not random. The Heptapods have strategically placed their ships in these 12 places to make a puzzle of sorts for Louise to crack, but she needs the other eleven pieces of the puzzle. It requires teamwork between these nations to bring the parts together to make a cohesive whole out of their scattered language. It sends a beautiful message about unification no matter where you are in the world, but it also is symbolism for a clock, which of course reverts back to my points about the parts and whole of time. Not only do the nations have to come together in order to solve this, but Louise herself must piece together the pieces of her timeline to connect the dots. Time is language in this movie, and our language is simply nothing greater than the Hermeneutic Circle by which we interpret anything. Albeit, in a generic and unimaginative way. Unfortunately, our languages are the boundaries in the world we live in. It creates obstacles and limits in which you cannot cross in fear of breaking the norms. Languages keep us a united society, but they also keep us caved by missed opportunities.

Another way one could look at all of this that the present language we use represent the limitations of our memories. We cannot remember everything that’s happened in the past. Our present language has made this an impossible achievement. Language is the end result of a past experience, so even learning an alien language will not allow Louise to fully remember a future she has not yet lived. However, she can roughly predict what’s going to happen next as any of us can, which is almost like re-watching this movie. The circular language of the Heptapods is obviously representative of the film’s unique, circular way in which it chooses to tell its story. The Heptapod’s ship really represents the entirety of Louise’s life, which is probably the primary reason why the position of the spaceship is different than most depictions of alien arrivals. Based on several analyses that I have watched on this film, it’s really no secret that this alludes, or references to the Black Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This Monolith may seem like it appears in random places at random times, but it’s actually a symbol of human evolution. It appears whenever humanity is at some breaking point in evolution. The beginning of all mankind, man’s movement into space, and finally at the main character’s death bed and place of birth. Similarly, the tunnel at the end of the ship in Arrival represents death, and the quick flashes of memories that Louise sees are to be associated with the flashes a person who’s on their death bed receives right before they move on. This all brings things full circle, and I hope this analysis was found to be helpful!