The gentle and hopeful first contact of Arrival

How in these despairing, uncertain times, the film’s message resonates stronger and more importantly than ever.

Major spoilers ahead

‘It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live around the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak’ Leopold Bloom (Ulysses)

You are a divided, isolated, suspicious world. You hoard secrets and search for an advantage over ones you perceive are in opposition to you. You are loud, and shout over one another without any consideration. You are unwilling to share. You adhere to an active and violent partisanship. You do not wish to understand others. You prefer to shut yourself off instead. You want to be inoculated from the reality of your world and the suffering within. You say for the good of the people, and the people are left behind. You say you are open, and yet you are shuttered away. You believe so much in being different, and yet you forget that you are part of whole.

But you do not have to be like this. Anymore. You are not alone. You are not all that there is. You must understand. You must help. You must be part of something bigger. We will be in need of you.

Why you? Why humanity? Why not?

Misconception disperses us, dominates us. Our own making, we suffer in complancy and comfort, that which is safe. But it decays us, becoming hollow within. Unaware of such a disease that makes us so frail until we crumble. Now in these times, it rises, tepid, filthy and poisonous. Seeping as it does out of fear we inhabit. Some may say it is too late to turn back. They do not say it lightly. Everywhere we look, our eyes, our minds, our hearts and our souls become damaged by the vitriol and the conflict. The violence and destruction. Individuals, families, peoples, nature. A constant surge of muck that threatens to suffocate all that we aspire to be. Kindness, openness and understanding are weakened and drowned. Among the millions of victims.

Arrival came at a nexus point. October 2016. The United States went in a direction that in hindsight seemed so inevitable. Whether the instigation or not, the chaos and despair of the world seems amplified more than ever. It is unceasing. And yet Arrival preached something that has been so desired for millennia. For countries around the globe to simply talk and share with one another. For if we are to attain our greater image of who we are, it is the only way for it to happen. It may be simple, utopic and fresh; an infinite pipe dream, and yet it is really all that we need to do to at least get things underway.

Agent Halpern: Why hand it out to us in pieces? Why not just give it all over?

Louise: What better way to force us all to work together, for once?

With unerring determination and a quiet, gentle power, as if on a pleasant slow stream of a giant river, the film remains on point. We do not have all the answers in our own pile. Stealing from another’s won’t grant long term positive change, it only breeds further resentment. If information is incomplete, the interpretation becomes warped. Arrival scatters the consequences of these misconceptions and assumptions throughout the film (often filtered through the media — itself not exactly having a great time of it when it comes to integrity , a hefty portion of not of its own doing )— a group of military grunts deciding to take explosives to the alien ship, a mass suicide, rioting, argument over what the term ‘use weapon’ could mean to them and to us. Our most fearful versions of who we are simmer and pop. We refuse to trust the information at hand, the experts who strive to understand it in the face of a conflagration of interested and conflicting parties. It is scarily prevalent in the our current climate.

Limited as we are by how we perceive time, from the lessons of history that so influence our current state and the narrow perception of the lives we lead — an inability to see beyond a generation — to the feedback loops that grow larger and larger. It is a flaw of ours, that the Heptapods that are communicated with are exceedingly patient with, as they do not experience time like we do — it is not linear. And this nature of how time flows grants them a more expansive view of existence. It must be imparted onto us somehow. To see the world from a different perspective. Louise (Amy Adams) begins to experience such a thing, as she immerses herself in their language. Her willingness and drive to understand and approach the aliens not from a place of suspicion but one of curiosity and openness is awe-inspiring, rare, and so very much needed.

This concept is echoed in this years First Man. Neil Armstrong (played with impenetrable intensity by Ryan Gosling) offers that space travel, and more specifically, landing on the moon provides one with a change of one’s view. The entirety of planet earth in one’s line of sight would be a humbling, life altering experience. All of a sudden the trivialities of us become just that. And maybe it gives us a chance to see who we are in a different light.

Of course in Arrival, Louise’s transformation of her experience of time isn’t restrained to her singularity. It’s the impetus to harness her unwavering determination and recognition to keep the world as open through communication as possible to take action. Her future self (from our limited eyes) and her current self interacting to help the Chinese military commander to change his mind and call for a collective sharing of information and dialogue. It’s a thrilling, emotional sequence that may indeed seem to be a flight of fancy and naivety, but at its root such a thing is well within our grasp, even if we do not possess the fluidity of time presented here. It speaks to the value of trust and honesty, and it should be shown at least once a year in classrooms around the globe.

For that is not what the message strives for. It is not the method, it is the act of doing so. Could you imagine if we simply talked with one another more and not to or at? To be willing to listen? To discard petty differences and the agendas that flood each and every one of us? Children of Men brushes up against this — Theo is naive when he is shown that Key is pregnant (after 18 years of global sterility) and while various groups want to use Key and the baby for their own ends, Theo believes that none of that matters. For the simple, gargantuan fact is that she is pregnant. That is the alpha and omega, everything else is secondary. Those agendas must wilt in the fires that is the promise of hope.

Granted, it may seem to be an oversimplification of a solution toward a more tolerant and understanding culture. There’s no magic spell we can bring forth to cast over humanity and instantaneously cure our ills (we would most likely find something to argue over even if we did have one). But the true power of the film comes from simply starting a conversation, crossing the divide that we put up around ourselves to gain more knowledge and become more aware of our part in the grand scheme of things. Maybe we are too afraid to be humble, or we simply have forgotten that such a virtue exists in a world that so readily demands people to be seen and heard as much as possible.

But we have to try. I have to believe in that much hope at least. Our future is counting on it.

Arrival (2016). Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures. Colour. 116 minutes. Sci-fi.