The thought-provoking periodical for thinking idiots
Film Bore
Reviewed in this issue: Arrival, and the Tom Chiang short story, The Story of Your Life, on which the film is based
(contains spoilers but you've surely seen it by now)
Arrival: 2016, Director, Denis Villeneuve, screenplay, Eric Heisserer
Oh dear.
Tom Chiang may be delighted at the success of this movie. On the other hand, he may be devastated at its clumsiness.
His short story has its faults: Chiang is obsessively exacting over linguistic and mathematical detail, missing opportunities to make the real story sing (see our book review below). The film, though, loses its way less than halfway through. It tries hard to deal with the heuristics and has some seductive effects (although, bearing in mind its near $50m budget, not altogether convincing). In the end, however, it translates metaphysics into politico-military alarmism for the sake of keeping action-hungry cinema audiences sated and the aggro-tension rising. There’s a lot of irrationality, a fair amount of shouting and some frankly implausible conduct. The crucial narrative that seeks insight into human relationships, loss and volition, outside the construct of time, is rather lost in all that gratuitous noise.
One fundamental plot point doesn’t make it through the cycle.
The protagonist (Louise, played by Amy Adams) makes an earth-saving intervention that relies on paradoxical events that viewers can either ignore or try to explain, perhaps through the loophole of her non-linear experience of time. Louise ‘experiences’ receiving information from Shang so she can tell Shang the information. Shang knows to tell her the information because he infers that she needs to be told, later in his own (linear) timeline, from the fact that she told him. There’s a problem, even in a non-linear time-frame. Unless Louise can tell the General this information, the point at which he shares it with her does not exist. Just because these things are simultaneously true (time is non-linear, remember) does not make either one of them happen. If one does not happen, neither does the other. The paradox remains. Louise still has to tell the general so she can locate the information she gives to him, but she has to locate the information so she can tell him. This is not a time paradox, but one of logic: There is ‘tell him’ or ‘not tell him’. In one scenario, she does not tell him, and he does not know to give the information to her. In another, she does tell him, and he gives her the information. At what point (not in time, but in logic) does he give her the information?
Here it is in Heptapod, with its translation which, like its original form, can be read from any point:
WRINGER REGULAR: Filmscores
The arrival of Arrival in 2016 was met with open-mouthed admiration, but is it a Good Film?
This is cyclic – if any one of these things does not happen, none of them happen.
In order for the ‘consequence’ to happen, the ‘stimulus’ must also happen. It is made perfectly apparent that the events within life are all known to a Heptapod. Louise did not know the solution at any point prior to enacting it, which is to say she invented it, which is not logically possible. Look at this from the Heptapods’ point of view. They must have already known the outcome, having synchronous perception of time. Did they not consider informing Louise? No, they left it all to her to find the solution, even though they are said to enact the future. The salvation of the heptapods, therefore of Earth, is enacted through climbing a very slippery pole, so much so it is impossible. It’s a pivotal plot point and the success of the film (and the short story) depends so much upon it that its failure to convince detracts enormously from the remaining scenes (perhaps the reason for so much distracting hullabaloo).
There are an awful lot of online reviews for this movie with extended discussions about the timeline. Most reviewers don’t see it as a problem. The objective truth about Arrival is that it doesn’t have a timeline. That would be a feature of linear time, which the film (and book) suggests does not exist. If time is synchronous, you cannot ‘travel’ through it backwards, forwards, or at the ‘normal’ rate. It is all there, all accessible, all at once. Imagine your whole existence as an image, a painting, perhaps, in 3-dimensions, containing a facsimile of everything you do. You can then examine any minute part of the image to find existent events. That means you can experience them 'whenever' you wish. It does not mean that you can add to them, or edit them. If they are part of the life-image, it is because they happen. Louise does not ever know what to say to the commandant because she does not ever speak to him. This is her life-image and, without the way she creates a mechanism to speak with him in his perceived future, she does not call him at the crucial moment.
Even ignoring all the superfluous noise and the clanger in the plot, the movie is a failure to translate a beautiful idea, which the short story also failed to truly capitalise upon. There is far more to be said about determinism and free will that the book tries to convey and the film misses. In the end (and maybe in the beginning and all of the way through), it leaves you feeling that it didn't really matter. It is a Good Film, despite all of this. Had the focus shifted away from the jeopardy facing humanity and heptapod, instead focusing on that facing Louise and Ian (Jeremy Renner), it could have been a beautiful film.