Arrival
“if you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?”
that question is so hard to answer yet if you take it at face value it seems simple, and that’s kind of why arrival hits so hard as a film. it takes such a simple question and stretches it into something quietly devastating. knowing your path and choosing to live it. choosing love even when you know it ends in loss. would you take the chance of losing the thing you love the most, for the chance something better exists?
“despite knowing the journey… i embrace it. and i welcome every moment of it.”
that line just destroys me.
what i love most is how the film makes you feel that idea before it ever explains it. from the very beginning of the film we are made to believe the louis is grieving a tragedy, yet that tragedy hasn’t happened. the way it’s shot and edited slowly reshapes how you understand what you’re seeing. you think you’re seeing flashbacks, and the past. you’re not. and the moment that clicks, everything recontextualises at once. its as if the entire language of the film switches out beneath you
visually it’s incredible without ever being loud about it. everything on earth feels muted, dim, claustrophobic, emphasising louise’s loneliness. then you step into the alien space and it opens up, brighter, grander, like you’re being pulled into something beyond human scale. it reflects the shift in perspective louise is going through.
even the small moments are doing work. ian claiming “the cornerstone of civilization isn't language, it's science“ only for his first attempt to communicate with louise to fail because she can’t hear him, within the first 20 minutes of the movie the premise is established that science can’t be explained or even implemented without language. the film is incredible in reinforcing its ideas in a natural way either through dialogue or visual storytelling.
i don’t know. its just one of those movies that makes me think about everything and i have an appreciation for that. also if max richters “on the nature of daylight” doesn’t make you cry you’re weird