Why I Love Arrival (2016 film)

Arrival leaves you with the uneasiness of a horror film and a life-changing line from an introspective wise man in a galactic war, exceeding even some of the themes in religious texts around the world.

It forces us to confront death in a way never seen before on screen. It creates a view of ourselves only possible through the power of Sci-Fi. The film leverages the impossible to tease us with what we all crave the most: to never die but in a way that is beautiful and not dystopian. Arrival uses a flattened universe with no time to allow us to see the futility and meaninglessness of a life lived without human romantic love. It delivers this truth through a series of lessons rooted in both speculative, but not impossible, physics and great character development.

In their pursuit of answers to their place in the universe through the process of trying to translate an alien language, they discover something more important than any destination on that journey, and that is the people in front of them materially. This comes at the backdrop of alien contact, global war, a role in a future galactic war through an unusual take on metacognitive-powered time travel, and romance. Arrival presents a mosaic of a vast and complex universe, but one ultimately framed by the love between two scientists.

The sad part is the limits of her inability to fend of the calcified habits, fears, and insecurities of her own mind. There is this question of, who does the mother love more? The man who made the child or the child. That depends on the person truly. And its a question that sometimes has no answer deep down, an answer only discovered in the worst circumstances. And children eventually fly the coup to leave us behind as they should, while the husband remains. It is a sad take that she chose to live in sorrow rather than to allow love from her husband or boyfriend to replace it.

While we are disappointed in her inability to reframe her thinking and life through introspection, to find love despite the darkness, to think not just of herself but also of him, it is a very good story of the limits of the human mind, a part of those that inflicts wounds on itself as if we want to suffer from some Stockholm syndrome. The brain is own worst enemy at times.

Can we saw humans are sentient and self-aware if our brain's are not ours to command to rewire upon our instruction on-demand so we may be happy? Or, should we say we are slaves to the limits of our brain computer and software architectural design and the biological matter that makes them up?

Ultimately, the real lesson is not the future of what could be typical to most Sci-Fi genres—no discoveries, no higher purposes, no cosmic perspectives—and more something real and relatable: the person we love in front of us to share it with.