I love this movie, in part because I’m a lover of language, and the visual communication of the Heptapods strikes me as gorgeous, highly nuanced, and inexplicable. Watching the linguists decipher it is thrilling for a nerd like myself.
The film is fresh in its combination of chronological and nonlinear storytelling, almost a relief to watch considering the overburdened tropes of “scary aliens” used in so many sci-fi movies.
Your exploration of the philosophical and culturized (I think I made that word up) motivations of human behavior help me understand what is so compelling and beautiful about the film. I wonder if we could speculate on the same factors that drive the Heptapods — they arrive with a belief, or at least a hope, that someone will try to listen to them before taking action.
