Spoiler Alert – I assume you’ve seen the movie.
The movie Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner is a wonderful story about interpersonal relationships and time.
While not obvious until late, time is the star of the movie.
We see that linguist Dr. Louise Banks is able to remember across time. We are familiar with remembering the past, here we get to watch her experience then harness her ability to remember the future.
The opening sequence allows us to see Dr. Banks remember the short, sweet yet tragic life of her daughter. We just see the two of them, so we believe this was in the past and she is alone as when we see her walking through campus. I mean, why wouldn’t we assume the opening sequence is a flashback.
We later learn it is a flash forward. She is remembering the time she will spend with her unborn daughter.
The subject of time is fundamental to the You Can Choose material. The movie Arrival implies a deterministic flow of time. Where events follow one after the other; and the future is already decided.
For storytelling purposes a deterministic time is more effective. In the movie it is much easier to show a line of time. It would get confusing rather quickly if time were presented as continuous, simultaneous and probabilistic.
The exception to the deterministic time story is when she asks Ian Donnelly, her future husband, “If you could see your whole life from start to finish would you change things?”. That question implies she has a choice. If she chooses to move forward with Ian, her daughter will be born. If she chooses not to marry Ian, she misses out on the joy and sadness of her time with her daughter. The events shown in the flash forward in the beginning of the movie never happen.
If she has the choice to marry or not to marry Ian, what about other choices. What about all the choices she will encounter as she continues her life? The hundreds or thousands of choices she makes every day. Do all of her choices lead to different outcomes?
And what about the gift from the aliens? The aliens teach Dr. Banks and eventually all humanity to think beyond linear time. The way they communicate does not require our time paradigm. It is fundamentally different. The premise is by thinking in their language, Dr. Banks begins to think more in line with the aliens and their ability to think beyond linear time.
The implication is by changing how you think, changing how you view the world, and changing your beliefs, the world is changed. Once you can see beyond linear time, other interpretations of time open up. Remembering the future suddenly becomes possible.
This was a great movie and well received. It is also another example of how main stream media is gently using the same concepts discussed in You Can Choose.
