ARRIVAL-CANDIDE

Arrival, a science fiction movie, directed by Denis Villeneuve, written creatively by Eric Heisserer, in my opinion, has a similar story concept as Candide, one of the eight basic stories which are used as blueprints for screen stories, even until today.

Candide movie starts with Candide falling in love with the baron’s daughter, Cunégonde. The journey of Candide starts when he is caught kissing with Cunégonde and he is expelled from the house. It is a long journey beginning from German, to Holland, Libson, Buenos Aires, the Jesuit’s territory, Eldorado, Surinam’s territory, France, Venice and lastly, he settles down at Constantinople, Turkey.

Along the journey, there are tons of ordeals that Candide has confronted with. For instance, Cunégonde, his loved one, accepted the marriage proposal from the governor of Buenos Aires, Don Fernando, after thinking of her own financial welfare. Besides, when he met Cunégonde’s brother who is the commander at the territory of Jesuit, his declaration to marry Cunégonde is despised by her brother. Later, when Candide is financially abound, Candide’s initiative to send Cacombo to Buenis Aires to purchase Cunégonde from Don Fernando failed as Cunégonde has no longer staying at there.

Other than the challenges he met in relationship, his impetuous action that has killed Don Isaachar, the Grand Inquisitor of Libson and Cunégonde’s brother, brought him anxiety and fear from getting caught by the respective authority. Being terrified, he is forced to escape to another area, facing the danger of being eaten by cannabis and the ship drowned after running into storms. Staying optimistic, naïve and persevere throughout the harsh journey, Candide manage to achieve his goals, which includes marrying Cunégonde and most importantly, he found the true happiness in life.

The distinct difference between these movie is the genre. Candide is an adventure movie whereas Arrival is a science fiction movie. Candide cast design involves approximately ten countries whereas Arrival only involves United States.

Similarity could be pointed out from the values portrayed in these two movies, which is being optimistic and persevere in facing the ordeals ahead of us. Louise Banks, a linguist who is granted the responsibility to interact and interpret the seven-limbed creatures’ (hetapods’) language. She is the most ideal personal to take up this task as she is the top ranked linguist in United States.

Overcome the fear in her, she starts to communicate with the hetapods, given the name Abbott and Costello. As she becomes more proficient and understand their language, she gets to know the purpose of the hetapods approaching the human is to “offer weapon”. Other nations start to plan the launching of attack towards the spacecrafts and hetapods. Being sanguine, Louise believes the term “weapon” might bring other meanings, such as technology or tools. Without the cooperation from the other nations who have negative perception on the hetapods, it might be a demotivation to Louise, but she persists to understand thoroughly on this term. She goes to meet the hetapods again and she finally acquires the real meaning of it, which is “offering gift” (to teach the humans their language).

By making use of her ability to see the flash-forwards of her life, she delivered the last words of General Shang’s wife to General Shang. Her action has brought the Chinese attack towards the spacecrafts to a halt. Going through these, Louise once almost sacrifice herself in an explosion and was life-threatened when she steals Agent David Halpern’s phone to call General Shang.

Besides, although she foresees that her future daughter, Hannah is going to die of cancer at her adolescence age, and her future husband, Ian will leave her for her daughter’s reason, she remains optimistic and accepted Ian’s confession and agrees to have a baby with Ian. Louise has also become the first to understand the hetapods' language and she is to spread the knowledge to the others in the future.

“..It’s a movie which requires a lot of thinking in order to thoroughly understand it. Besides, the pace of the plot of the movie is rather slow and it gets me sleepy in the cinema somehow..” -Phyllis-

Reference: SparkNotes: Candide: Plot Overview. 2017. SparkNotes: Candide: Plot Overview. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/candide/summary.html. [Accessed 18 January 2017].