Linguist prevents attack against aliens

Rating: 8/10 (12 November 2016)

Structure is theme in Canadian director Denis Villeneuve's Arrival. The two interwoven plot lines embody the distinction between our linear time and the broader perspective that reveals the past and the future as well as the present. That's the perspective we would get from outer space, from beyond our normal experience and apprehension.
The space alien plot unwinds in simple linear story telling. It introduces creatures who have that greater perspective. The aliens have come to earth to provide the wisdom we need to survive. They have foreseen a disaster 3000 years from now in which they will need us. They now give Dr Louise Brooks the gift of their wisdom, their perception of the future and the past. With the latter she can win over the Chinese general by telling him his wife's dying words.
With the former she can foresee the heartbreak that awaits her — but she embarks on that journey even knowing its pain. Life and love are worth it.
Louise's story — her marriage, her bearing, raising and loss of her daughter — is told in a non-linear mode, leaping back and ahead, because of that greater perspective the aliens gave her.
This difference also distinguishes their two languages. We speak in linear sentences that unfold over time. The aliens communicate in whole circles, with instant complete structures. They see a whole where we only see a part.
Because the film opens on Louise and her daughter we initially think the alien plot happens after her divorce and her daughter's death. In the first scene Louise tells her infant that they are at a beginning or an ending. That's truer than we realize, because the film ends on the beginning of that marriage.
The family narrative starts at the end of the film, when Louise has published her dictionary of the aliens' world language and is about to marry and have a child with scientist Ian. This plot- line is like the snake biting its tail — or the instant complete circle that is the basic form of the aliens' language. The film's first scene actually happens after its last.
The aliens' broader vision and understanding provide the genre's familiar lesson — mankind has to overcome its delusions of difference and rivalries and its mortal competitions, to embrace a common humanity. That lesson is as old as The Tower of Babel, here replayed as the wall of TV screens on which the 12 nations visited by the aliens at first communicate and share knowledge, but then shut down out of mutual fear and suspicion. The aliens have brought their message in 12 distant instalments because they need us to overcome our animosities and superficial differences to work together, to harmonize.
As in so many alien creature films, the military's first impulse is to attack them. Here at least they make an attempt to learn to communicate with them first, but panic when the language difference kicks up the term 'weapon' instead of 'tool.' For the frightened any hint of danger can trigger aggression. Unfortunately, the unknown seems always to trigger our fear, whether our aliens are from outer space or another culture.
In this film the military is fortunately checked by the linguist and the scientist. Seeing world governments embrace science over their old ideology is extremely heartening but — especially after The Election — not a very convincing assurance.