Misleading

Rating: 4/10 (5 June 2017)

It is wonderful to see a Sci-Fi movie that doesn't turn into a horror flick or war movie. The movie itself is intelligent, asks big questions, and focuses on the human experience, just like Sci-fi should. Unfortunately, none if this is entirely true.
The movie does fall short in its execution and the final payoff. If you are paying attention, I think that the viewer is left feeling cheated because the promise of the movie is never achieved and the story telling tricks that are used basically present a lie to the viewer for the majority of the movie. In the end, the lie is revealed but instead of being a lie coming from an unreliable narrator like in The Sixth Sense, it is a lie generated by the writer and director to provide a sense of conflict for the main character that does not really exist. This is the lie that ruins the movie. And, the final message of the movie, what we are left with, is a horrible vision of the universe with no uplifting or redeeming qualities except, maybe, that life has value.
The rest is spoiler so stop here if you have not seen the movie.
The movie begins with the protagonist being shown losing her daughter to some horrible disease. The protagonist is sad. She's obviously just gong through the motions after that. The cinematography and presentation also lends to this feeling of loss and desolation that the protagonist is obviously feeling. But, that's just a trick. The protagonist has not yet had the child and the child has not died yet. The producers show you these scenes from the future and then do not give any indication whatsoever that they have now moved the timeline back to present day -- the day the aliens arrive.
All through the rest of the movie, you see the protagonist trying to decipher the alien's language. You see her struggle to stay focused. You sense her deep despair over the loss of her child. They hint that the dad is a scientist and coincidentally she is working with a physicist during all of this. As a side note, Jeramy Renner's character of the physicist is pretty much useless during the entirety of the movie. He's only important to fulfill the future need for a dad for the kid that dies. You are fooled by this because of the lie setup in the first part of the movie.
Once the protagonist figures out the language, she can then see the entirety of time because that's what the language teaches you. Now the writer and director reveal that she has yet to have the child with the physicist father and she chooses to have the child anyway knowing that the child will die of a horrible disease. This is beautiful in that it shows the value of life and the power that it contains. It also indicates, as does other things in the movie, that the future is set and cannot be changed. This opens the door for all kinds of conflicts and philosophical discussions about the nature of the universe. None of this is explored, of course. It's just left sitting there like a pregnant hippopotamus. Then the movie ends.
The viewer is left unfulfilled. The great mystery of the aliens turns out that they want to give us the "language" which is earlier mistranslated as "weapon" which sets up a bunch of artificial conflict in the movie leading to one of the dumber scenes where a bomb is exploded on the space ship by mind-washed soldiers. But they provide this language where you can now see the totality of your existence through time. This means that it's pointless to live your life because you now know everything already. And, you know you cannot change anything at all. You will know that you are being a jerk to somebody who is going to die in the next hour, but you are still a jerk to them and you can do nothing to change it all. It is the ultimate expression of nihilism. Nothing you do matters. It's all set in stone even though you now may know better, you are doomed to live your mistakes all the way through. It would be like being trapped in a nightmare.
The language was not a gift. It was torture. It would destroy humanity.
So, in the end, it turns out that this was yet another horror flick disguised as sci-fi. The gift of the language really was a weapon. It wold destroy humanity by destroying the wonder of living your life.