Really not very bright
-
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.