Arrival

one of my favorite movies ever made. I've always been drawn to languages and while the film takes the concept to a fantastical degree, there's a grain of truth at its core: languages genuinely change the way you think. I'm completely fluent in German and English and while there are real differences between them - gendered language in German, for example - they share enough as Germanic languages that the shift in thinking was never something I actively noticed. but now learning Mandarin on my own, it's becoming impossible to ignore. learning how to describe things, how to communicate, engaging with a language that carries such extensive history and offers so many ways to convey the same feeling with subtle differences in intensity - it starts to reshape something fundamental. the way you categorize the world, the way you reach for a feeling and find that your new language has a word for it that your native one doesn't or that it requires three words where one used to do. you don't just learn to speak differently, you start to perceive differently. 头皮发麻 Arrival understands that, which is why, beyond being beautifully crafted in every sense, I appreciate this movie as much as I do