Arrival (2016): Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams

i noticed the age discrepancy with amy adams but chalked it up to the filmmakers' laziness- this kind of shit is so common now. i saw 'Loving' yesterday, which takes places over the course of nearly 15 years, and the characters don't age one bit.

Maybe the alien ships' atmosphere is good for the skin

Chinese General's "I'll never forget the words you said" made me think of this
https://frinkiac.com/meme/S06E17/221170.jpg?b64lines=IFdoeSB3b3VsZCB5b3UgbmVlZCB0byBzZWUKIGl0PyBZb3UncmUgdGhlIGdlbml1cyB3aG8KIGludmVudGVkIHRoZS4uLiBwcm9kdWN0IGluCiBxdWVzdGlvbi4=

the setting seemed ambiguous enough that i feel it could've taken place in 2040-70 but i may have forgotten some obvious signs. either way, i thought the same thing about her gorgeous house, maybe being a teacher is lit in the future

enjoying movies is a state of mind isnt it

does it bother anyone else that in the movie Louise begins having visions of her daughter immediately after she first exchanges written language with the heptapods? at this point the only symbols they've shared with her are their names, but apparently this minimal contact is enough to alter her fundamental perception of time. iirc in the Chiang story her temporal leapfrogging doesn't begin until after she's had several sessions with the aliens and sufficient time to immerse herself in their language. much of the story's impact comes from the way its structure echoes her mental state, and the movie sacrifices some of this impact (and believability) by relegating the daughter narrative to a series of conventional 'flashbacks'.

I also find it odd that she couldn't remember what she said to the Chinese general, given that she experiences all moments of her post-contact life simultaneously. that scene only really makes sense if you assume she's caught in a spooky mental time travel feedback loop that isn't invoked at any other point in the film and that contradicts the way she supposedly perceives time.

That loop, if I'm not mistaken, also contradicts the way the precognition is constructed in the story. Iirc the way that Chiang describes it is that one can conceive of one's entire life, but cannot engage in activity to change or alter the outcome, because the two states of conception and action are one and the same.. but maybe I read it wrong.

I also was under the impression that Heptapod B's pictograms would increase in size and complexity as the format of the desired communication grew larger. Words, then sentences, then paragraphs, and then thinkpieces were contained within single pictograms, and Louise's capacity toward precognition was a result of having to construct increasingly complex grammatical structures in a non-linear fashion.

As for "she didn't appear any older in the future" problem, I thought it was a deliberate red herring to make the audience assume Louise was having flashbacks, not flash-forwards

^^^

Also, if they had aged her as poorly as the digital floating hair looked, you would not have liked it

i liked this movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ

As for "she didn't appear any older in the future" problem, I thought it was a deliberate red herring to make the audience assume Louise was having flashbacks, not flash-forwards

well, yeah, of course that's what it is - my objection is that it's a bit of a cheap, lazy trick. plus it's still kinda weird even if you do go along with the movie and assume they're flashbacks, since she appears not to have aged or changed anything about her appearance between having her baby and the present

it's the kind of twist that seems better suited to the written word than a visual medium, i think?

redhead age p well fyi

amy adams, for instance

i'm married to one, and she has at least changed her hairstyle in the 10 years i've known her

lol have you not seen predestination

That movie is completely flabbergasting. Sarah Snook is really good in it tho

(straight and bobbed > curly and shoulder-length > straight and past shoulders > curly and mid-length, fyi) xp

lol have you not seen predestination

That movie is completely flabbergasting.

Yeah, Predestination is p whack, but most of the whackness actually comes from the Heinlein short story it's based on.

The central 'first contact' section of Arrival was very gripping, but the beginning and end are boilerplate mush (in other words, Alfred OTM). Cannot for the life of me see Villeneuve as a major or 'important' filmmaker.

i get the feeling that, like innaritu, villeneuve sees himself as a major or 'important' filmmaker tho

although arrival definitely feels less weighed down by self-conscious Statement-Making than sicario does

better for it

blame nolan obv

oh yeah, absolutely better for it - i did really like arrival, i was just bothered to an unreasonable by a couple of details

i'm happy to blame nolan for lots of things but tbf i think self-important Statement Film-Makers pre-date him by a fair distance

*an unreasonable degree

yep, but i think you can trace the insistence on the statement as forced centrepiece of what otherwise wouldve been very well crafted action/scifi/whatever has really come into play with the financial success nolan brought.

lindelhof, mendes dishonourable mentions. villeneuve started off taking them their drinks and now slashes tyres for em, fingers crossed he can pull out of the spiral before he goes full "do u see" on some poor mothers son

maybe we should poll the worst Self-Important Statement filmmakers of the 21st century

would hatevote

nolan would win in a landslide tbf

Iirc the way that Chiang describes it is that one can conceive of one's entire life, but cannot engage in activity to change or alter the outcome, because the two states of conception and action are one and the same..

Interesting to think about. I can't comprehend what it would be like to be a Heptapod except as a kind of split consciousness. One part of you is acting in time, while the other part of you is seeing the whole succession of actions from sideways-on. It's hard to imagine combining the two perspectives, since action in time seems like it requires a sense of the world as containing opportunities, affordances, routes along which to project possible actions. The sideways-on view seems to disillusion those things. Not that it's a problem for the movie to keep it mysterious. It's more about provoking the idea.

Yeah, I am chronically giving away my copies of the Chiang so I never have it on hand. But iirc, in the story, Louise describes the heptapod's behaviour as almost like a kind of performance. They know what will happen already, and the actions they take are more like cursory rituals toward the inevitable.

It certainly was thought-provoking in more than a 'what-if' sort of way, I found myself thinking about my own life and the inevitable conclusion of this activity or that, and how "learned wisdom" would inform, for example, where I'd go after work and when I'd leave to go home, or whatever.

maybe we should poll the worst Self-Important Statement filmmakers of the 21st century
― not all those who chunder are sloshed (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 21 November 2016 12:32 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

von trier or noé surely

does it bother anyone else that in the movie Louise begins having visions of her daughter immediately after she first exchanges written language with the heptapods? at this point the only symbols they've shared with her are their names, but apparently this minimal contact is enough to alter her fundamental perception of time. iirc in the Chiang story her temporal leapfrogging doesn't begin until after she's had several sessions with the aliens and sufficient time to immerse herself in their language. much of the story's impact comes from the way its structure echoes her mental state, and the movie sacrifices some of this impact (and believability) by relegating the daughter narrative to a series of conventional 'flashbacks'.

I also find it odd that she couldn't remember what she said to the Chinese general, given that she experiences all moments of her post-contact life simultaneously. that scene only really makes sense if you assume she's caught in a spooky mental time travel feedback loop that isn't invoked at any other point in the film and that contradicts the way she supposedly perceives time.

― memories of a cruller (unregistered), Sunday, November 20, 2016 9:01 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm, these were the only things that actually bothered me in the movie, especially the former. Going in having read the story, it felt like they were way too eager to get to the 'twist'. It could have been done by just inserting those scenes without any explanation, but instead they made it clear (or at least very strongly implied) she was experiencing them in the 'present' (holding her head, people asking her what's wrong, etc).

yeah those were obv mistakes imo, in the imdb goof plot hole sense but more importantly the bad storytelling choices sense

This was decent, I guess I need to read the story cause from what people are saying it sounds like all the not-so-good stuff is stuff the filmmakers added?

dude's random midfilm exposition voiceover was shameless

http://i.imgur.com/cXLzaEV.jpg

I couldn't stop thinking about Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure when the General Shang gave the future Louise the answers for the past Louise.

What was the Sanskrit word for war and needing another cow? I didn't make that bit out.

If Louise's book was a best seller, then wouldn't everybody who read it and learned to translate Heptapod acquire the 'weapon' of their language? Or was it just her 'cause she went on the ship and directly interacted with Costello?

This shat all over Interstellar, damn that was some annoying garbage.

This shat all over Interstellar, damn that was some annoying garbage.

Life is way too short to ever watch another Christopher Nolan movie.

I could watch the new Nolan film, or I could rewatch Memento or The Prestige. Seems Jonathan is the Nolan to watch.

If Louise's book was a best seller, then wouldn't everybody who read it and learned to translate Heptapod acquire the 'weapon' of their language?

I guess, but presumably it's still wicked hard to learn

You only have to learn just enough to let the precog kick in and take you the rest of the way.

really enjoyed this. pretty sentimental at the end, but also really needed something this optimistic at around this point; with so many questions about the morality of even continuing to reproduce knowing what might be coming soon (though of course this film also posits a humanity that will be around in 3000 years to help once we all learn Heptapod). mainly I've always been violently allergic to the entire post-Heinlein school of time travel paradox / split timeline science fiction, favoring simultaneity / fixity like Primer or Slaughterhouse 5 so this was refreshing

my favorite album last year was 'New Songs of the Humpback Whale'; noise removal software has enabled a quantum leap forward in the clarity of underwater recordings, allowing you to subtract out any splashes or rumbling artifacts -- that CD doesn't sound like you're in scuba gear 100 feet from a whale, it sounds like you are somehow in an auditorium 10 feet away from a whale. I kind of knew it was money in the bank for immanent hollywood alien sound design but I'm glad it was this film that did it, and I was also really impressed with the way it was used in the actual score during the first approach. it is actually quite a trick, getting away with using whale song in music (I do own those Paul Winter records but mainly to make fun of them, and even the Hovhaness piece lets the orchestra lay out for the solos)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsaRJ4j4xIo

actually looks like what I assumed was whale song was actually spontaneous vocalizations by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, recorded on an iPhone while he was listening to a rough mix of Johansson's score! totally thought it was whale song.

Well, in fairness, they may mean "We will be by in 3000 years to retrieve the calcium from your bones, turns out bones will be useful for what we'll be up to then, and when you want bones in 5016, Earth's the place to go!"

At a certain point, I did lean over to say "half of this film is excellent and the other half reminds me of my least favourite parts of Interstellar and Gravity".

My companion (later, because she's more polite) also pointed out that there's no effing way you'd send a particle physicist there, that's what anthropologists are for.

Reminded me a lot of China Mieville's Embassytown thematically, though obvioulsy not as complex or richly realised. A bit more depth and ambiguity than your typical blockbuster Hollywood SF though. Loved the musical cues for the Heptapods.

What about it reminded you of Embassytown?

i thought this was very good. certainly better and more affecting than Interstellar

What about it reminded you of Embassytown?

― mh

A plot revolving around weird alien semantics.

ah, I was thinking of the city & the city and had forgotten I have yet to finish embassytown

I missed the twist!

Kind of a weird experience.

Thought it was a decent film, but when it ended I was like "I wonder if those aliens were supposed to be a metaphor for cancer or smth

lol

just came back from seeing this. as far as the recent spate of spacesuit movies go, I think this could be the best of the bunch. didn't quite beat Gravity in 3D on a decent screen in terms of outerbody thrills but it was really well done and I liked how they managed to avoid gratuitous conflict or peril.
A smarter Independence Day and a simpler Slaughterhouse 5.

That whalesong album mentioned upthread is really something!

I found this interview with the movie's cinematographer interesting.