Freedom Ain't Free

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2016)

Some viewers may object to the descriptor "time-travel story" because there is no actual travel, at least not spatially. But this narrative explores the very sticky problem of (mental) navigation through time in a non-linear way. Supposing you could see the future and, in doing so, you could use that information to affect the present. This is what Louise Banks learns to do, by learning the language of aliens who experience time as a continuum (as opposed to the linear flow of time's arrow, the way humans generally perceive it). Note that she can affect the present, but not truly alter it.
Therein lies the philosophical problem which is not explored here. Unlike the 'Terminator' or 'Back to the Future' franchises, where "the future is not yet written," here the future is set and unalterable. How do we know this? Because otherwise, Banks has no reason to trust what she's seeing. In this scenario, she has no free will. While we can appreciate the difficulty in expressing such a thing in film, the realization that future events are determined takes the steam out of decision-making. In fact, with time as an unalterable continuum, all decisions are already made. The beauty and mind-bending thing about all this is that such a universe may very well be the one we live in.