Arrival Explained

The meaning of Arrival only becomes apparent in repeat viewings. The circular language of the alien Heptapod's is the foundation of interpretation itself.

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Music:
On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter

[No-kboy]

I like arrival because it doesn’t portray aliens as these copies of humans. Most modern pop culture portray aliens as humanoid creatures, but if aliens exist, they won’t look like humans at all. Aliens would follow their own rules of evolution and biology depending on the conditions they live in. The aliens in arrival are “accurate” because they evolved differently than humans and would have no chance of looking like humans. Also, I like how the movie doesn’t portray aliens as unfeeling monsters, but instead complex, intelligent, and interesting creatures with a mysterious past . Arrival is just a good movie all and all.

[gandfgandf]

This film had so much emotional impact on me that I haven't been able to re-watch it. Yet.

[TheFiown]

As someone who speaks several languages I can confirm that when you are immersed in a language your whole being adapts and changes, it's not just language it's also body language and attitude and understanding. Different languages seem to 'need' different senses to be practiced or understood.

[sarahmeyer]

i would give anything to watch this movie for the first time again

[alisterzarkar]

You left out something very important. "We help humanity. In 3000 years, we need humanity's help. "

[cassiemarie]

I’m an ASL Interpreter and this is one of my favorite films ever. Being bilingual has completely changed my brain and the way I think, it’s such a beautiful thing. This movie really hits home how it shapes your mind, especially when he asks Louise if she dreams in their language. I’ve been learning for over seven years and I dream that people I know, my friends and family who don’t know ASL, will be signing with me and I’ll remember it when I wake up. It’s such a strange thing.

[Mr_Pv]

I love this movie, specially how it views languages. Me, as an Spanish native speaker, I can think in English without the necessity of translating in my mind, I always thought of that but I never saw it portrayed in film, and certainly not as amazingly as this film does. Great analysis, great video!

[brettwaddingham]

When I watched Arrival for the first time, I walked away thinking that the movie was the closest portrayal (possible) to how God (seeing all parts and the whole) must think. It was truly moving and thought provoking.

[timhallas]

"I have traveled the world only to arrive back where I started and to know the place for the first time."
It's about the journey the mind takes to understand itself, and how everything else follows.
To know ones own mind is to know the universe within.

[Demineoz]

Man the end of the video had me shivering and almost tearing up, amazing hidden meaning of this movie.

[soxfankd]

It's almost a creepy coincidence that you come out with a video about Arrival the day before I have to write an essay on the film for my class. Thanks for coming in clutch for me man! Really needed this to get my brain really stimulated for this!

[shawnliu]

This movie really left an impact on me. I still remember after I watched this movie for the first time, someone in the theatre shouted, demanding a refund for the ticket because they had came expecting to see something like Aliens/Independence Day/ any other blockbuster alien invasion movie.

This memory really revealed to me that experience and knowledge can totally change ones' view on life and understanding of our environment. Having an open mind that is permeable to new experiences and comprehensions is always.. IMPORTANT.

[MikeKollin]

Our illusion is that we go from past to future. We go from Now to Now.

[amosho]

There was a scene that Louise told Ian that she doesnt know how to explain to Ian what she experienced. Thats an allusion i think to what Wittgenstein said that "even if a lion could talk, we wouldnt be able to understand him".

[ricogoldstar]

One thing you didn't mention is the Heptapods self preservation motive for contact. 3, 000 years in the future, humanity aids the Heptapod species, possibly from a disaster. It's not stated exactly how we help, but we do, and become good friends with the Heptapods.

[NebulaComments]

I lost my Dad when I was 12. I watched him die slowly over a number of years, including his final moments. If you think about life as a pathway, death comes at the 'end' and childhood at the 'start'. Ordinary cause and effect, or in life following a 'normal' progression (your parents dying after you've grown up) means you'll experience said progression piece by piece, for me that wasn't the case. I was almost perptually sad for much of my life, felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and I couldn't undstand why. Arrival helped me to understand that it was seeing my fathers death as a child that caused this. I saw the end of the 'progression' before I had fully experienced the beggining. It was like seeig the final words of a book as 'it passed, the end' before you'd even finished the first chapter. That overwhelming feeling Amy Adams' character felt was what I felt. Only when she learnt to appreciate life for all that it brings could she fully appreciate it, as I am now learning. I always wondered why I saw meaning where others didn't, felt the scope of life beyond the immediate, it's because I saw it's true extent. Magically but harrowingly, I learnt to apprecaite it's presence, through an awareness of its end.

[justinhicks]

I'm sure someone has already said this but...."Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."

[corneliusquincydavenportic]

The idea with time in this movie isn’t as complicated as some are making it out to be. It’s not Back to the Future time travel where you can change the future by going to the past. The aliens reveal that they experience time all at once. Louise realised this when she experiences “memories” of her future in a kind of “deja vu” way.

That’s it. All she can do is “remember” the future. She does this because her future already happened, the same way we remember the past because it already happened. It’s all predetermined. The point was showing that Louise now appreciates the beauty of her life because she sees all the joys and pains of life in hindsight, even though she hasn’t lived through those experiences yet. It’s a great theme and some people are too wrapped up in the physics of it that they just don’t get it, man.

[Technotic]

this movie along with interstellar are such beautiful and mind blowing films and i would do anything to see them for the first time again

[steve.santiago]

I think Hannah drawing her parents “talking to animals” and Hannah’s play dough heptapods meant Louise was able to teach Hannah the circular language and Hannah could see visions of the past (and presumably the future) as Louise can. Louise has to teach humanity the circular language and Hannah was her first pupil.