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I watched Arrival (2016), there was a lot more to it than I was expecting (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/movies@lemm.ee
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I was expecting a generic alien invasion movie, and I was pleasantly surprised

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[–] 11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

SpoilerOf course its totally fine to not like a movie, but I wanted to clarify the memory as time travel thing.

I can't remember where I first heard this, it wasn't this movie, but suppose humans are oddly fixated on the flow of time. To us the flow of time is immutable we exist in the present and remember the past. What if other races could "remember" things that haven't happened yet as easily as we remember things from the past.

The movie kinda proposes that learning human languages traps us into this linear / temporal mode of thinking. As in, as children we learn to parse things start to finish and that's it... we just never do it the other way future to now.

Turns out I've done a shit job at explaining this.

As I said, it's fine to hate the movie. I just thought I'd try to explain this part because I felt like I understood it, although I'm not sure anymore.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    I think you explained it quite well. I just read the story and was a bit confused by the ending but this clarified it for me.

    Major spoilers ahead! (struggling with the spoiler tag!)

    !spoiler The story reads like she's in the present and you assume her memories of her daughter are in the past. Then looking back at the language used, she's describing memories of her daughter with language that indicates it's in the future, not the past. So it stands to reason that the encounters with the heptapods are in the present and learning their language gives her the ability to 'see' the future I assume Gary is her daughter's father. Just like she mentions of the readers of the Book of Ages, she won't do anything to change the future even if she knows what's coming, even if it means a future where her daughter dies young.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    spoilerYes, Gary is the father. He's ended up leaving her (in the future) because he found out she had the future knowledge of their daughter's early death but went ahead with having her anyway.

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