The Power of Language and Communication in the Sci-Fi film "Arrival".

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Disclaimer: The following paper includes spoilers, that can easily ruin the film is you haven’t seen it before.

The Power of Language and Communication in a Film

Arrival (2016) is a sci-fi drama film directed by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve is one of the most influential directors of our times and I believe that the audience is still in the process of discovering the beauty and the ultimate mastery of his storytelling techniques with each and every film he releases. I specifically have chosen the film Arrival, since it is a perfect example of how film narrative should be constructed in relation to its themes and moods.

The film is based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. The opening scene starts with brief moments of life of the main character Dr Louise Banks portrait by brilliant actress Amy Adams. We see her giving birth, raising her child – Hannah, we see her relations with her daughter having its ups and downs during the coming-of-age period, and finally, we witness how her daughter dies of an unknown disease. Then we cut to the initial timeline of the story (Act 1), where Louise is working as a lecturer at a university, specialised in linguistics. Inciting Incident starts with the invasion of aliens who had sent their unidentified objects to Earth. Dr. Louise Banks together with Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are sent to study the language aliens use to communicate with humans. Exposition instantly introduces the protagonist and her goal to study the language by also giving insight on her tragic past. Aliens or what humans call them in the film “heptapods” have their unique method of communication. They release an ink from their hands to form an image of a circular shape which appears to be the written form of the language they use. While studying the language, Banks starts to have flashbacks of the moments she had spent with her daughter. After having some kind of base for their language, Banks manages to decode a phrase aliens used which says “offer weapon”. Act 2 introduces the conflict that is between the protagonist and her goal. Various interpretations of the phrase “weapon” come upon by various leaders of the countries, saying that aliens want to wage war and it is direct threat to the security of the Earth. Whereas, Banks believes that the word “weapon” can have multiple interpretations such as “tool” or “means”. While the entire world prepares to bomb the heptapods’ craft, Banks and Donnelly try to enter the vessel and Banks manages to speak with one of the aliens. This moment becomes the turning point of the plot, since it is revealed that the language was the initial weapon. Act 3 immediately starts with the following plot-twist suggesting that aliens came to offer their language as a weapon, since they will need help from humanity after 3,000 year. Anyone who learns their language starts to experience time differently, meaning not in a linear form but in a circular form. The resolution of the story reveals that the flashbacks where actually memories from the future, and her daughter wasn’t even born yet. Throughout the whole process of learning aliens’ language, Banks was experiencing Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that the language can shape the fundamental brain cognition of the speaker. After successfully preventing the clash between aliens and humans, Donnelly expresses his love towards Banks and the audience understands that the father of the daughter is in fact Donnelly. On the other hand, Bank know about her daughter’s the tragic fate. Banks is placed under a worst dilemma and she needs to make a decision. The film ends with her asking a question to Donnelly “If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?”. The climatic scene reveals that Banks chooses to live her life the way see saw it already.

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When it comes to define the genre of the film, we can apply several conventions of genre to the film. First and foremost, the involvement of aliens itself suggests the fact that Arrival is a science fiction film. According to the definitions suggested by Selbo, sci-fi films should demonstrate the imagination of the screenwriter in terms of creating a world where scientific ideas can be explored by using the most basic question “what if”. However, Arrival is not one of those ordinary blockbuster films that have a protagonist and villain, rather than, as Villeneuve mentioned during one of his interviews, the ...

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