Not About Time-Travel *spoilers*
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Arrival
dmforeacre — 9 years ago(January 10, 2017 01:25 PM)
I've been seeing some comments about how the movie's portrayal of time-travel kind of breaks the story for some viewers. I think that this is really missing the point.
The movie isn't about time-travel at all. Instead, it's about a theory that all of time; past, present, future, everything, actually exists all at once. It is only because we are 3-dimensional creatures that we perceive time in linear order.
The heptapods, for unexplained reasons, are able to see time as it really is everything happening at the same time and their language reflects that. Louise says as much in one scene.
If I had one major critique of the story it would be how Louise is suddenly able to see glimpses of things in 4 dimensions. Simply learning to understand their language wouldn't be enough to change her perspective, something that has been hardwired into our species, and as far as we know all other life.
Perhaps some hand-waving can be done involving her immersion in the alien atmosphere and her contact with the aliens but that's still reaching.
So, when she's seeing the future at the celebratory party and snippets of her daughter's life (which, by the way, I thought they did an excellent job of leading the audience to believe those were past memories) there wasn't any actual 'time-travel' involved. She's just seeing what is. It's so far beyond our experiences that we can't even wrap our minds around it. It also raises some interesting questions about determinism and free will, but those are problems we've been struggling with since the beginning of time.
Overall, a very enjoyable sci-fi movie with a great 'lightbulb' moment that has a lot of resonance. -
The_TJT — 9 years ago(January 10, 2017 06:22 PM)
The movie isn't about time-travel at all. Instead, it's about a theory that all of time; past, present, future, everything, actually exists all at once. It is only because we are 3-dimensional creatures that we perceive time in linear order.
Yes it was not time travel per se, but seeing into the future.
That would imo lead to conclusion that all time exists at once but that's just further speculation and not really relevant to the film.
If I had one major critique of the story it would be how Louise is suddenly able to see glimpses of things in 4 dimensions. Simply learning to understand their language wouldn't be enough to change her perspective, something that has been hardwired into our species, and as far as we know all other life.
How do you know, have you tried?
I think the idea was that she managed to change the wiring in her brain because she began to understand the writing - the writing was the key to her understanding time differently.
It was really a great science fiction concept and the film managed to link all story elements together nicely. -
The_TJT — 9 years ago(January 10, 2017 08:36 PM)
Not really travel to the future, just
see
the future. What she saw/knew was older version of herself, not the current version.
That of course raises interesting question if anything could be changed at all, or has everything already happened.