What really happened at the end of Arrival? What was the deeper meaning? We unpack the details and symbols, and we speak to the screenwriter for an extra level of insight.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
00:07
if there’s anything to be taught, it’s how
00:11
we should strive for transparency in our communication.
00:14
The major twist in arrival is when we find out that the scenes of Louise’s daughter
00:18
Hannah and her early death – which seem to be flashbacks – are actually flash-forwards.
00:24
As Louise learns the Heptapods’ circular way of writing, her brain rewires
00:28
and she develops their circular perception of time, enabling her to see the future.
00:33
[Ian] You know, I was doing some – some reading, um, about this idea that…
00:37
…if you immerse yourself into a foreign language that you can actually rewire your brain.
00:43
[Louise] Yeah, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
00:46
It’s – it’s the theory that, uh, the language you speak determines how you think and…
00:51
[Ian] Are you dreaming in their language?
00:55
So the construct that Louise’s brain function changes as a result of learning an alien language
01:00
is based on the theory of linguistic relativity, or the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,
01:04
which posits that learning a different language can fundamentally alter our thought process and how we see the world.
01:11
Simply put, language shapes the way we think in our reality.
01:15
Humans perceive time as linear and one directional.
01:17
But, just like the circular nature of their language, the Heptapods perceive time in a Nonlinear way.
01:23
When the main action – the aliens’ arrival takes place –
01:26
Louise has just met Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist and Hannah’s future father.
01:32
We’re seeing Louise and Ian starting to fall in love.
01:35
[Ian] You see the jokers that we’re working with?
01:38
Thank god I got you.
01:40
[Louise chuckles]
01:41
In the flash forwards, we see Hannah making a clay animal that resembles Abbott and Costello. She draws her parents together –
01:48
[Hannah] I drew dad.
01:49
– mentioning her scientist father. While playing with Hannah on the lawn of their home, Louise looks briefly confused and asks:
01:56
[Louise] What day is it? Do you know, baby?
01:59
[Hannah] Sunday.
02:00
But the moment that finally clicks for most of us is when Louise restates Ian’s words “nonzero-sum game”. And at this point,
02:07
we realize that Ian is to become Hannah’s father.
02:10
We aren’t explicitly told why they separate, but we know that Ian will be angry at Louise and will leave her based on Louise’s future conversation with Hannah.
02:20
[Louise] I told him something that he wasn’t ready to hear.
02:23
Ian’s anger highlights that Louise’s choice isn’t simple, and not everyone might agree that she made the right one.
02:30
But, through Louise’s new understanding of the future and her choice to embrace love that won’t last forever,
02:36
we find the heart of the movie.
02:41
When Abbott and Costello first tell Louise they’re here to “offer weapon”,
02:45
two U.S. soldiers take matters into their own hands and bomb their spaceship, or shell, causing Abbott to enter the “death-process”
02:52
when protecting Ian and Louise from the explosion. Louise and Ian then figure out that the message they were being given
02:57
only fills 1/12 of the frame in the video that was recording their session, indicating it was only 1/12 of the whole message or gift.
03:05
So, to fully understand the message, the countries must work together with the other 11 sites who also received a variation of the same message.
03:13
[Louise] We don’t know if they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool.
03:18
Instead of heeding Louise’s advice, governments panic and stop communicating with each other.
03:23
Louise returns to the shell where Costello envelops her the alien atmosphere and uploads into Louise the entire understanding of their language.
03:31
Ironically, as Louise learns to communicate with the Heptaods, Abbott and Costello,
03:35
she’s faced with the grave dangers of miscommunication among the people on her own planet.
03:40
Louise uses her future visions to gain information about
03:43
Chinese general Shang, who’s on the verge of attacking China’s
03:46
shell and setting off attacks by Russia, Pakistan, and Sudan. In order to reach his personal cellphone and convince him of the Heptapods’ good
03:53
intentions, Louise flashes forward to a United Nations gala months into the future after she’s already saved the planet from mutual self-destruction
04:01
to speak with Shang to learn his private cell phone number and his wife’s dying words, which translate to: “In war there are no winners, only widows.”
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Within Louise’s circular understanding of time she’s living the future moment at the gala
04:14
before the moment of calling him. She’s remembering a future event the way
04:18
we remember a past event. Here, Louise’s ability to change Shang’s mind underscores the final urgency of communication.
04:26
Getting through to each other means literal life or death.
04:31
[Louise] We need to be talking to each other!
04:33
[Agent Halpern] You want to talk to them? Find out what this means.
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“Why are you here? What is your purpose?” And the answer in the script was “We’re here to return the favor”.
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Because 3,000 years from now you help us. That’s just the way they think.
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One of Louise’s final questions in the movie
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underscores the themes of free will and personal choice.
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[Louise] If you could see your whole life from start to finish,
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would you change things?
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The pulsing and shifting quality of the logograms hand to the slight mutability of choice
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For the Heptapods, free will exists by going through with a choice you already know you’ll make,
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even if it includes tremendous pain, loss, or sacrifice.
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Heiser tells us that, given the vast lifespan of the aliens, Abbott’s choice to die is thus a much bigger
05:21
sacrifice than we first grasp. And they understand that it’s more important to help us now than it is to suffer
05:28
whatever minor consequences in their mind happen.
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And the deeper significance of that – I haven’t shared this with anybody yet – is if they know 3,000 years in the future that’s likely because a
05:42
Heptapod, one of these creatures, lives that long. They have millennia
05:47
of a lifecycle there. So when one dies, it’s a huge significant thing.
05:55
Just as the circle is a prominent visual symbol in the film – think the shape of the logograms,
06:00
the shells, and the roundness of the Heptapods – the story itself is
06:04
circular, non-linear. It starts at the end with Louise in the future retelling events that happened to her in the past.
06:11
[Louise] I used to think this was the beginning of your story.
06:15
Memory is a strange thing.
06:18
Hannah’s name is significant in that it’s a palindrome; it’s the same spelled backward and forward.
06:23
Also, consider the mirror imagery of the release date of the film, 11:11.
06:27
This echoes the movie’s message about time: that by learning to view the world differently,
06:32
we could start to have an intuitive understanding of events
06:35
that’s less based in a straightforward, linear, causal way of thinking.
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We often assume that the outcome – a happy ending or the
06:42
arrival at a final destination – is necessary to make preceding events worthwhile.
06:47
Louise’s decision to love Hannah and to commit to motherhood knowing that the final end will be deeply painful rejects that assumption.
06:55
For Louise, the happiness and love that we can achieve by connecting with other humans is worth any pain that follows or precedes it.
07:03
[Louise, whispering] Come back to me.
07:05
[voice breaking] Baby, come back to me.
07:07
So the movie’s title, Arrival, is a subtle hint to us that we shouldn’t look forward to a final arrival in our lives.
07:14
We should embrace the here and the now and the human connection we can enjoy at any time of our lives.
07:20
The shell also looks somewhat like the famous monolith of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
07:26
which famously explores the perils and possibilities of technology and progress.
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But here, instead of the sharp angles of Kubrick’s towering, frightening, black rectangle, the shell’s edges are rounded.
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Whereas the monolith reminds us of the nightmarish possibilities of our technological advances,
07:44
Arrival wants us to consider the positive and warm potential as well.
07:48
Likewise in 2001, the very first tool man’s Ancestors discover is a weapon for killing
07:54
which foreshadows the sinister nature of Mankind’s future technology.
07:59
Arrival critiques our automatic inflation of weapons and tools.
08:02
[Agent Halpern] We have to consider the idea that our visitors are prodding us to fight among ourselves
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until only one faction prevails.
08:09
[Louise] There’s no evidence of that.
08:10
[Agent Halpern] Sure, there is. For a world with no single leader,
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it’s impossible to deal with just one of us.
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The humans’ impulse to mistrust turns out to be misguided
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as the aliens’ true intention is to pass on the helpful tool of their language itself.
08:24
Another representation of circularity and life cycles is the Heptapod’s seven-pointed limb,
08:29
resembling the seven-pointed heptagram, a deeply significant religious and occult symbol
08:34
signifying the seven days of creation and often considered a magic number and symbol of perfection.
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The inky circularity of the logograms also looks a little like the Ouroboros,
08:43
an ancient Greek symbol of a snake eating its own tail
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which represents the eternal cycle of renewal and self creation; the infinite loop of life and death.
08:53
Contemplating these creatures, any fans of Kurt Vonnegut will immediately notice that the Heptapods, with their ability to see time in both directions,
09:00
resemble the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse Five and The Sirens of Titan.
09:06
Louise’s book, The Universal Language, suggests that, through the Heptapod mindset,
09:10
humanity is not only learning a new language, we’re also learning a new state of being.
09:14
Just as the film reverses traditional dark versus light imagery –
09:19
suggesting the dark is just the unknown, not to be feared – it leaves us with a feeling of potential and optimism
09:26
about what we can still learn and discover if we’re open to what and who we don’t yet know.
09:32
Ultimately, Arrival leaves us with the feeling of hope.
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But if we can learn to communicate and give each other the benefit of the doubt instead of rushing to paranoid instincts of self-preservation,
09:42
we can save ourselves from destruction and harness the power to choose to live more enlightened, deeply-felt lives.
09:50
[Hannah] I love you.
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This post was previously published on Youtube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video