Blog Post # 5

So last week in class we watched the movie Arrival. It was based off of Ted Chiang's The Story of You.

Both the short story and the movie did a great job in the telling of the story. With the story, it was easier to see the detail and description more in depth than what was shown in the movie.  

When watching the movie I noticed they didn’t show the physics part from the story. It would have been cool to see that play out but also it would be a hard concept to produce.

The short story is more straightforward about the order of Louise's experiences. We know before the first section break/memory that the first alien contact happened before the child was born. The short story proceeds along a traditional structural route of a protagonist remembering two things from the past, the first alien contact and what we come to learn is the memory of the pre-knowledge gained by the protagonist.

Watching the movie it was easier to grasp what was written out in the story. It was easier to tell what was present and what was future. Arrival puts everything into perspective. The movie has a way of capturing the emotion of the actors as well as the audience in a way that leaves them stunned.

Arrival also layers in some important secondary notes that add nuance to that easy takeaway. Because it’s not just deciphering the words that someone else is saying that’s important: It’s the whole framework that determines how those words are being pinned to meaning. We can technically speak the same language, but functionally be miles apart.

There’s only so much you can put into a movie but with a book there is a lot more. The description and the feeling of the characters comes more to life in the short story than it does in a film. The film just quite literally brings the feelings to life associating it with a real person but it doesn’t give off the same effect. For a movie with so many complicated ideas, it doesn’t waste any more time on exposition than is absolutely necessary. Arrival is serious and smartly crafted, shifting around like a Rubik’s cube in the hand of a savant, nothing quite making sense until all the pieces suddenly come together.

The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other.

The story and film set a new perspective on our lives. The time travel aspect as well as the fact of knowing the future and decisions made by the characters sets an impact on the viewers.

Either way, I enjoyed both and it’s one of those “watch again” or “read again” pieces. I’d recommend it to others. It’s a movie worth seeing. It keeps you thinking throughout and makes you wonder about your own future.