Review of Arrival (2016) by Luke C — 25 Jun 2018
Arrival is a love letter to language. "Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict." Is the first line in a book by the main character who is a linguist given the duty of translating the language of an alien species.
The real main character of the film is the Sappir-Whorf hypothesis which states that how we think is informed by our language. In the film one of the ways a nation tried to teach the aliens language is through the use of Shogi which is a Chess like game.
If the aliens are only taught words related to a competitive game then they can only describe things in terms of competition. As the film puts it "Give them a hammer and everything is a nail" It makes the audience consider how language has effected our perspective and how we might be limited by it.
What would a language look like if it had no limits and caused our perspective to shift in the direction of infinity? Words are intended to represent concepts, causality is a concept at the root of making predictions, if we understood causality perfectly and codified that understanding into language then we could accurately make predictions.
In the film the aliens possess such a language and as a result predict the future.
This review of Arrival (2016) was written by Luke C on 25 Jun 2018.
Arrival has generally received very positive reviews.
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