In 2016, Denis Villeneuve released Arrival, a stunning science fiction movie with deep
implications for today. Science fiction is never really about the future, it’s always
about us... and Arrival, set in the barely distant future, feels like a movie that is made for 2016,
releasing a few days after the most explosive election in recent memory. But the story Arrival
is based on the award-winning novella Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, published in 1998,
almost two decades ago, which indicates its central themes were building long before 2016.
And Arrival is much more concerned with deep truths about language, imagination, and human
relationships than a political moment. Not only that, but Arrival is one of the best movies of
that year and one of my personal favourite sci-fi films, containing a moving story, gripping events,
shocking twists and impeccable imagery. In this video, I'm going to be giving you my thoughts
on the film's central theme of cooperation, exploring how Denis Villeneuve conveys and
drives home the message in an important way. This video essay continues my Road to Dune
series, where I create content on all of the dune adaptations, Frank Herbert's original novel, Denis
Villeneuve's filmography and his upcoming 2021 film. To stay up to date with all of these videos,
then don't forget to support this upload by giving it a like rating, subscribing to the channel
and turning on your notifications. Also, feel free to check me out on Twitter, Facebook,
Reddit and Instagram at cortex videos, which is all linked in the description below. But without
further, ado, let's dive into Denis Villeneuve's Arrival.
As "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter, plays over the opening shots of Arrival,
we get our first clue for what’s about to unfold in the story and this particular track is
one of the saddest songs. It's a bittersweet feeling that instantly puts its mark on the
whole film, with the audience learning very quickly that Amy Adams' Dr. Louise Banks has
suffered an extreme loss, with this functioning as a prelude to the story. Then the story begins
and a series of enormous pod-shaped crafts land all over the earth, hovering just above
the ground in 12 locations around the world. Nobody knows why and nothing happens. As world
governments struggle to sort out what this means, the people of those countries react by violence,
joining cults and even conducting mass suicides. But we begin to follow Dr. Banks who gets a visit
from military intelligence, in the form of Colonel Weber, requesting her assistance as
an expert linguist in investigating and attempting to communicate with whatever
intelligence is behind the landings. She arrives at the site with Jeremy Renner's Ian Donnelly,
a leading quantum physicist, to start the mission. From here, they suit up and enter
the craft to see if they can make contact and what unfolds is a perfect message towards our
world and the cooperation between people. Its pacing is slower than you’d expect from
an alien-invasion film, almost scattered. For a movie with so many complicated ideas,
it doesn’t waste any more time on exposition than is absolutely necessary. Denis Villeneuve's
Arrival is serious and intelligently crafted, shifting around with nothing making complete
sense until all the pieces suddenly come together. And of course, the cooperation
of all of these pieces are more important than a presumed alien invasion or attack.
The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many linguists and philosophers of language,
that we do not all experience the same reality. The pieces of it are the same, we live on the
same planet, breathe the same air, but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change
based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other. For instance,
there is large evidence that a person doesn’t really perceive a colour until their vocabulary
contains a word, attached to meaning, that distinguishes it from other colours. Or consider
the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings, but can only be
conveyed accurately in some culture. We might "feel" the emotion, but without the word to
describe it, we tend to merge that emotion with another under the same heading. This means that
reality and what we perceive as comprising the facts of existence
takes on a different shape depending on the linguistic tools we use to describe it.
Adopting this framework doesn’t necessarily mean any of us are more correct than others
about the nature of reality, but instead, we are doing our best to describe reality as we see it
and as we imagine it to be. This is the challenge of translation and why learning a new language at
first is just about collecting a new vocabulary and an alternate grammar. But eventually,
it becomes about imagining and perceiving the world differently. This is the basic insight
of Arrival and that if we were to encounter a culture so radically different from our own
that simple matters we take for granted were radically shifted,
we could not simply gather data, sort out grammar, and make conclusions. We’d have to either absorb a
different way of seeing, despite our fear or risk everything. To underline the point, Dr. Banks and
the operation are continuously experiencing breakdowns in communication within the team
and with those in other parts of the world, who aren’t sure whether the information
they receive should be kept or shared.
Arrival proposes that if we want to empathize with each other we need to talk to one another,
and that’s the way the human race will survive. But this is just the foundation.
Arrival also layers in some important secondary notes that add nuance to this primary idea.
Because it’s not just deciphering the words that someone else is saying that’s important,
it’s essentially the whole framework that determines how those words are being labelled
to meaning. It's the language games and how beings interact with each other
when the world is different. This matters for the film’s plot, but more primarily,
since this is science fiction and therefore actually about us, it actually has implications.
Language isn’t just about understanding how to say things to someone and regard meaning to what comes
back, as language has consequences. Embedded in language is action because the metaphors that we
use as we try to make sense of the world tell us what to do next. You empathized with someone not
when you hear the words they’re saying, but when you begin to figure out what metaphors make them
work, and where that conflicts or agrees with your own perspective.
Arrival takes off from this insight in an undeniable sci-fi direction, but it makes
a strong case that communication, not battle or combat, is the only way to avoid destroying
ourselves. Communication means not just understanding the terms we use but the actual
framework through which we perceive reality. And this is of course really hard as we witness
in the film. The moment in the ending where this changes is with the powerful
message of cooperation. How bridging the gap in communication with a single language can result
in us understanding the other and cooperating. Of course, this would be less likely to happen
in our real world but the message is so powerful that it connects to all of us.
The conclusion loops back to the possibilities of the reshaped human imagination
and this is what great sci-fi can do. It can send a perfect message that connects all of
us as human beings.
Overall, Arrival is a film, with complicated and unpredictable visuals
that embodies the main point. It's grounded as a humanist story,
especially in its moments of silence and the movie concludes on a different note from the
linguistic one. One much more related to loss and a regretful question about life and risk.
But the deeper insight on language and how this affects communication
and cooperation is where the film manages to elevate the more understandable ideas. To me,
it's one of the best science fiction films of the 2010s, because Denis Villeneuve manages to balance
all of this within a compelling, emotional and well-executed story.
But that was my video essay on Denis Villeneuve's Arrival and how the director displayed the perfect
message of cooperation. I'm interested to see how Denis pulls and tugs at this theme in Dune,
especially with elements like the development between the Atreides and the Fremen,
but what is more connecting is the overall effect that the story will have in relation
to the world around us today. Dune is coming out at the perfect time
and like Arrival, it's a film that is extremely relevant in particular themes. Arrival posed
the question of whether humanity could cooperate on a large scale, even more so with the arriving
future becoming the present. Dune poses questions on Power, Violence, Free Will,
Fate, the Environment, Human Culture and Human Cognitive Advances. So let's see
how Denis will really display these important messages. But like Arrival and his other films,
the director has always found the right balance within his narrative and I personally think he
may do the same with Dune. We'll have to see, but let me know down below in the
comments section what you personally thought towards Denis Villeneuve's Arrival,
alongside what you think towards the film's primary message of cooperation.
My next video in this Road to Dune marathon continues with Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner
2049, where I will be going deeper into how the director, in my opinion, crafted a
modern science fiction masterpiece. This will be released in the next week
alongside much more content on Dune 2021 coming over the next few months. To stay
up to date with this series along with all the latest news on Denis Villeneuve's DUNE,
then subscribe to the channel and turn on your notifications. Also if you enjoyed this video
remember to leave a like rating and follow me on social media via the links in the description.
But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, I've been Cortex and as always make some noise.