Really not very bright
-
TaanStari — 9 years ago(February 03, 2017 09:10 AM)
But the reason for divorce wasnt that the kid was dying, but that she knew the whole time and didnt tell him. Would you be able to live with someone who knowingly puts you and your daughter through such emotional trauma?
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cdm0061 — 9 years ago(February 03, 2017 08:18 AM)
This is something that is bothering me more the more I think about it.
Did she only see one possible future after learning the heptapod language and that future involved having Hannah so she chose to keep Hannah's untimely death from Ian to keep him around long enough to make it happen that way?
Or did she see multiple possible futures?
Was having Hannah the only way to meet General Shang in the future and be able to unite humanity with the Heptapods in the present?
It might have been interesting if the movie had presented alternate futures(via Louise's flashforwardses) in which she decides not to have the child, or tells Ian about the child's short lifespan before conception and he decides not to have the child. Maybe Louise's life would have been worse(by her standards).
If there was only one future she sawthat would just be an awful mind trip to know your future and could see the bad things coming from years away, but were powerless or too scared to deviate from the path. -
jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 06, 2017 11:52 PM)
You're falling into the linear time trap.
In this story, time happens all at once. We humans only perceive it linearly. Humans are like travelers riding a bus down a road in heavy fog. We know what we passed, but can't see what's ahead. The aliens see the whole road map, all at once. There's no alternate map. Glimpsing the map won't allow you to rearrange it or the route the bus takes. -
iggnir — 9 years ago(February 07, 2017 08:44 AM)
Then how do you explain the thing with the chinese general at the end? You theory makes a lot of sense, only for this huge mistake that ruins everything for me. What could have been a fantastic movie ends up being another cheap SF flick
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jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 07, 2017 10:14 AM)
He said what he said because he's always said it. It was already on the map.
Or at least he had to say it or it would have altered the time-line and there would have been a war. He feels
compelled
to give her the information in the future. Like Bill and Ted making a note that at some point in the future they'll swipe the car keys they need in the present, go back in time, and hide them behind the bush. Then, they look behind that bush and (ta-da!) there are the keys.
In this case, the general was never implicitly told to give Louise the information at some point in the future but he expresses that he feels that he
must
and that that's the main reason he's at the ceremony. He seems to have free will and could choose not to but
something
has been telling him that he
REALLY REALLY should
. -
iggnir — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 01:25 AM)
Indeed, I'm ok with the whole "I feel like I need to give you this info", although it's quite far fetched. What I have trouble with is that she chooses to use this information to change the future. It means that she decides to suffer through her whole life, knowing that she could just change it by using info from the future? Or rather knowing that she could have changed things, but that it just didn't happen because the future is already written? It doesn't make a lot of sense
That's not a gift, that's a bloody curse for me. The human mind is just not designed for this kind of stuff And another very important point: the aliens main aim is to teach their language to humanity, in order to give them the gift of prescience (or wholescience or whatever). Knowing that humans can use this gift to modify the future, what happens when everyone has learned it? Does it mean that everyone is doomed to accept the future as it is? Unlikely Someone less inclined to suffer like the main protagonist will always try to modify the future. But what happens to the memories of other people then? Wouldn't it be a mess very quickly? Or do the momeries adapt for everyone as the future changes?
Although I understand your point, I feel that this theory of yours (that's quite widely accepted it seems) doesn't quite work. It really is a pity, because I was really enjoying the movie until the big twist at the end
P.S. Sorry for my bad english. I'm always trying to improve it, but I think that's quite hopeless at this point -
jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 11:29 AM)
First: Your English is excellent so stop apologizing to people about that.
Second: I apologize if I repeat myself here. I've been discussing this in other posts.
I make two points though, or rather I offer two possibilities:- Free will is an illusion and everything the characters did was preordained, which doesn't seem like much fun.
or - The characters had free will but there was a planned path for them to follow. I lean more toward this hypothesis. Louise seems to make a conscious decision to embrace Ian, setting her on the path she saw ahead.
Just as someone who can see a road on the map is still free to choose to drive their car into the ditch instead, Louise could have deviated from her route through time. But this would have meant erasing her child. (If you knew that your child would die around the age of 15 would you go back in time and prevent your child from being conceived? Or would you embrace the 15 years you would share with your child?) Louise seems to decide that the wonderful journey is worth the sh*tty destination. Remember that Louise is seeing the flash-forwards as (presumably precious) memories.
As for the general; He "knows" that he has to give Louise the information she needed in the past. It confuses him, but it feels right to him. I imagine that he could choose to "run his car off the road" by choosing to not give Louise the information, but he "knows" that's the wrong thing to do. He might not know where the road leads, but he's pretty sure that driving off it is a bad idea.
So, there seems to be varying levels of temporal awareness depending on the character's understanding of Hepapod and/or their contact with Louise through her clairvoyance:
- Louise clearly sees the future.
- The general has a sense of his role in a causal loop.
- Ian doesn't have a clue, but seems happy to accept that all's well that ends well when the aliens depart.
- Free will is an illusion and everything the characters did was preordained, which doesn't seem like much fun.
-
n-j-toner — 9 years ago(February 12, 2017 09:48 AM)
To cdm0061
That's the problem with saying time is non-linear for the aliens, they live their whole lives knowing the beginning to the end. It's a glossed over point, especially the ignored question of the alien's lifespan as they can 'see' 3,000 years into the future. I don't think enough was made of the point that if everyone looked far enough ahead and worked together the world would be a better place.
I'm not a fan of loops as a resolution anyway. So I fully agree with the need for alternative future flashes.
I think largely I'm disappointed that in the end it wasn't really sci-fi, it was an interesting personal drama with aliens in it. Renner's character was there to ask science questions, but none of them ever got answered. I don't need every question answered, but there's no functioning alien species in my head, or a distinct resolution to the acceptance of their gift.
And to all those claiming that folks who don't like this want only the Independence Day/Guardians of the Galaxy kind of sci-fi, I'd like a solution that is actually clever rather than just 'theoretically possible'
Dum Spiro Spero -
matttjonez — 9 years ago(February 03, 2017 09:26 AM)
Those events are all determined. The gift of the heptapod language didn't give her the ability to alter her fate, only the ability to know it and experience her life simultaneously unaffected by the passage of time that we know as humans.
So, she had to have the child. She had to tell Ian about their daughter's death. He had to leave. And she had to know she would have to do this, because it's her life story, and it's still a pre-determined course of events. She resigns herself to this reality. The illusion of free will is completely erased once you are unconstrained by the linearity of time.
This is actually one of the things the film can explain. -
organicnegation — 9 years ago(February 03, 2017 11:55 PM)
Here's the problem with this, though. The illusion of free will is the only thing that makes human life possible. It is inconceivable that she would live without this illusion, and that she would take pleasure in life in the process. You also can't argue that she resigns herself to this reality because this implies that she has the free will to do otherwise.
A simple way to put it is that human life is some kind of elaborate magic trick, and that it is the mystery of this magic trick that makes it worthwhile. Once you remove the mystery and you expose the trick for what it is, it loses its appeal. Life is like that. Believing we have free will and the illusion of choice is what makes life livable. Yet we are to believe that she goes through all of these pre-determined events with the full knowledge of the non-linearity of time and her lack of free will, all the while having the same predisposition of a normal person who can enjoy the trick like it has never been spoiled. You can't have it both ways. The full knowledge of why you will act and the consequences of your actions would logically prevent you to act. -
wesolmon — 9 years ago(February 06, 2017 11:50 PM)
Sidepoint- we don't know she died in pain.
Anyway, i think this is one of those questions the movie asks on a deeper level; If you knew your child was going to die young, would you still have them be born to the world and live their life or would you deny them their life because you know they will die?
I think it would be selfish to not have the child at all. Everyone dies. -
jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 07, 2017 10:46 AM)
What you are suggesting is that she have an abortion.
Not in the sense that a child has already been conceived, but still an abortion. You're suggesting that she should have terminated the pregnancy by not conceiving in the first place. Because the child, whose life she remembers, will die around 15. That
is
young, but it's still about
15 years
of a happy, healthy life until then.
If your parents found out that you'll be dying a painful death next week you'd be okay with them going back in time and deciding not to have you? Or 15 years before you get sick they kill you, which is what you are suggesting would be the
un
selfish thing to do. -
jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 07, 2017 12:22 PM)
I think everyone still had free will.
At the end, Louise appears to make a choice to commit to the Hannah time-line before she embraces Ian. The embrace seems very deliberate. The movie also then cuts to Louise and Ian embracing similarly in the future when Ian asks her if she wants to make a baby. Cut back to the landing site and Louise smiles at the "memory". I got the strong impression that it was the embrace at the landing site that sets the Hannah time-line in motion.
At the ceremony, the Chinese general also expresses that he felt
compelled
to give Louise his phone number and to tell her what his wife's dying words were. He shows Louise his phone number and says, "
I do not claim to know how your mind works, but I believe it was important for you to see that.
" He then goes through the same sort of discussion before telling Louise what his wife said. -
Demarates — 9 years ago(February 05, 2017 11:23 PM)
What I found strange is that when she told him (the kid was about 6, add 9 months pregnancy and at least 3 months of courting before he knocked her up, probably more), he still didn't speak the language.
I mean, if he had picked it up for himself in those 7 years, he would have known as he too would be able to see the future.
Or was she somehow the only one able to grasp the language ? -
jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 07, 2017 12:38 PM)
Some people are good with languages and some aren't. She's a world-renowned linguist and he's a mathematician. Learning Hepapod was probably like trying to learn dolphin. He was able to find mathematical aspects within the language (1/12th) but it was Louise who translated it and communicated with it.
Then maybe Ian just never bothered to learn the language because his wife was fluent and he wasn't going to be chatting with any Hepapods anyway (They weren't due back for 3000 years). Which could explain why he was so pissed off that she didn't come clean with him about the future; She knew he was time-blind and deliberately didn't let him have a say in the time-line choice. -
iggnir — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 01:38 AM)
That's not how it work in the real world. I mean, my wife is a very good linguist and she is very good at learning other languages as a result. But that doesn't make her a super-hero. She just learns languages much faster than me. And assuming that the main character learns the language in one or two months, her husband would have had more than enough time to learn it in 7 years. Note that he was not very dumb himself And a big bloody nerd too. So the "Ian just never bothered to learn the language because his wife was fluent" makes absolutely zero sense.
And also, is she the only super linguist in the world? Damn and she only managed to get a professorship? She is not very good at managing her career -
jeffjohnston-13327 — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 08:54 AM)
That's not how it work in the real world.
No movie is going to show you the real world. But, even allowing for artistic license Louise is presented as one of the best linguists
in the world
. She's a Stephen Hawkings of language, rather than just "
a very good linguist
".
As for Ian, he may not have learned the language because he had no interest in learning it. The Hapapods weren't coming back for 3000 years. I lived in Quebec until I was 13 and was fairly bilingual. I used to even think in French, although my native tongue is English. But when we moved to an English-language province, I no longer needed to use French and now I can just read it a bit and say a few phrases. I lost interest in it and thus the ability to speak it. My father, who continued to travel back and forth to Quebec on business, maintained his French. Today, he can still speak French and I can't. I simply stopped learning the language and quickly lost the ability to use it. In later years, whenever we traveled to Quebec together he did all the talking. Ian is like me; He might pick up a few words of the "conversation", but he's not getting the whole picture. Only, once Louise starts seeing the future, thanks to the Hepapod language, Ian doesn't even know there's a conversation happening.
Sure, Ian's "
a big bloody nerd
", but he probably dove back into his field of mathematics once there was no longer a need for him to learn Hepapod. Louise is also a big bloody nerd, but we don't see any indication that she takes up learning complex math equations from Ian. They each had their niche. Mathematics is still around, while the Hepapods are long gone, so a better argument would be to ask why nerdy Louise didn't learn complex math.
I checked wikipedia by "list of polyglots" and there were 71 "he" and only 9 "she" mentioned.