ARRIVAL Task 5: Characters Key Development
The movie begins with a professional linguist, Louise’s flashback scene, in which she was divorced, and her child was diagnosed with a disease and passed away. Following by 12 unidentified spacecraft with aliens, landing across the planet. Louise was then assigned a task by U.S. Army Colonel in order to communicate with the aliens to get to know what they want and why they are here. With great fear, Louise had to enter the spaceship. Then, she had found out their written language of complicated circular symbol, and started to study the symbols. By the time, she began to have dreams of her and her daughter.
The story comes to the climax when China notified nations to attack the aliens while Louise found out the aliens came to ‘offer weapon’, which Louise thought that the ‘weapon’ gave alternative translations such as ‘tool’ or ‘technology’. After knowing more and more communications with the aliens, Louise eventually revealed that her ‘visions’, was not flashbacks, it’s flash-forwards.
Finally, Louise was able to use her ability to stop the war between China by convincing the General through his wife’s last word. At the same moment, a scientist, Ian, who was also following the team, confess his love to her. Despite of knowing the fact that they will get divorced, Louise agreed.
Louise finally made the choice at the end – all the pain that I’m going to suffer is worth of because of the moments of beauty with my own child. To wipe out the painful moment from your future, you would have to wipe out a lot of beautiful moments at the same time. It’s actually a trade-off. If someone mention the pay-off of the story is going too fast, I would say that’s the right timing offered, to give the audience a moment of rethinking and recapturing.
Although the movie is slow-paced deliberately, the story is still quite well-delivered. It starts with Louise Banks’ grief flashback. It actually wants to ground us to the film of Louise’s tragic past. However, at almost the end of the film, eventually we just get to realize our mind set are totally wrong, the story has turned over to that it’s not actually a flashback, it’s Louise’s strength to look through the time non-linearly – it’s flash-forwards. The film really did a good job of holding the sense of mystery to keep us guessing throughout the movie, and with the great twist of the story at the end, it actually makes us demanding to have a second, third watch, in order to grips with the story.
I love the way the director constructs the story of the humans dealing with aliens through communications, not by forces. They’re using language to solve the problems, not causing problems. However, there’s some scenes in the movie that I’m not so satisfied with, is the role of the secondary cast, Ian the scientist, is giving me a sense of invisible in the movie except for the end till he confesses. He should have a more solid performance throughout the whole movie, by assisting Louise or to find out more about the aliens. Besides, the reasons of why the aliens are here don’t actually well-delivered in the movie.
