What's happening during the beginning montage (SPOILER topic)
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Arrival
Stev-2 — 9 years ago(November 19, 2016 05:59 PM)
What was the 'in story' or diegetic (if you want to be fancy) explanation for the opening montage, in the sense of what was actually happening at that 'moment'?
Three theories I have (partly garnered from other suggestions):- Nothing. It doesn't really 'happen' in the world of the movie so to speak. It's simply a cinematic or story telling contrivance, much like the mid-film montage narrated by Ian.
- It is part of the events of the film's action like anything else: that is, the film's actual events all take place between the day the aliens arrive, and the day they leave. Like any other 'vision' we see in the film, this is something Louise sees during that time, as she learns heptapod. It's probably one of her dreams that she has in heptapodian. The voice over (like Ian's) is non-diegetic, however.
- This is the end of her linear life, that is, "Louise is death process". These are her final thoughts. This makes some sense: naturally she'd be thinking about her daughter as she dies, and the movie references death (Hannah, Abbott) and beginnings and endings a lot. So the movie is almost exclusively her pov, and starts with her as she is at the end of her linear life having these final thoughts.
Option 3 explains everything we see
and
hear, but does break the theory that all the events of the film are within the period of time the alien ships are on earth.
Option 2 adheres to that theory, but means we have a non-diegetic voice over. However, we have at least one anyway, because of Ian's, so maybe that's most likely.
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natts — 9 years ago(November 20, 2016 11:18 PM)
All the events of the film can't possibly be during the time the aliens are on Earth, because we see lots of things that happen after that (meeting Chang at the UN, birth of her daughter, various stages of Hannah's life, including Hannah with her daddy Ian, and Hannah's death).
We see her life in the way she does - not in a linear sequence, though we don't know this until later (just like she doesn't until she understands Heptopod). I personally assumed at the start that Hannah must have lived and died before the aliens arrived - that we were seeing flashbacks, not flashforwards, which are common in many films, which is probably the intention of the script.
I loved Christopher Nolan's Memento, which also plays with this type of story telling. -
Alondro — 9 years ago(November 21, 2016 12:44 PM)
Hurr durr, but since time can haz be non-linear in the film's world, they technically ARE all happening when the aliens are there since all time is happening simultaneously.
See, I get the concept. It's just a severely misapplied concept which misses the proper interpretation of time being an illusion of perception: that being that the PRESENT is the only reality and each moment is merely a movement of the overall energy gradient of the universe. We cannot see the future because those points in the gradient curve have not been attained.