If you knew your life in advance, would you be willing to experience it again?
Suddenly appeared in the sky 12 alien spacecraft, scattered in 12 countries, just silently floating in the air, without taking any action, but in the eyes of humans, it was a silent deterrent.
Aliens suddenly arrive and do nothing, why, exactly?
"Advent" is adapted from the chinese writer Ted Jiang's science fiction short film "The Story of Your Life". It is a very special one in the science fiction film about human contact with aliens, because it directly explores the language of how humans communicate in two different civilizations.
In most science fiction movies, aliens may be english by default, and at the same time, compared with previous science fiction movies, it does not have too many shocking visual spectacles, nor does it have a tense and exciting plot, and even some people will complain that it is dull and obscure.
"Advent" is about 12 countries on Earth, and suddenly one day 12 pod-shaped UFOs appeared.
Linguist Louise and physicist Ian were sent by the government to understand the purpose of their trip by communicating with aliens.
In many encounters with aliens, Louise discovered that the alien language was completely different from what humans imagined, it got rid of the speed of pronunciation, there was no logic of cause and effect before and after, similar to a calligraphic circle.
At the same time, experts from all over the world, including China and Russia, translated an alien language almost at the same time, "surrendering or providing weapons."
This sentence put humans and aliens in a stalemate, and just as China was preparing to launch an attack on the spacecraft, Louise entered the spacecraft again, sincerely apologized and asked questions to the aliens.
Finally learned that the aliens are here to help human beings, because 3000 years later, they also need human help, and the way to help human beings is to teach human beings their language, once they master this language, they can perceive time and see the future.
Louise used this special ability to single-handedly stop the Star Wars, and Louise saw her future, she would marry Ian and have a daughter, but her daughter died of an incurable disease.
After that, Louise will tell her daughter about the future of death, Ian can't bear this blow and leave Louise, Louise will also bear a life of happiness and pain with her daughter.
How hard is it to read alien text?
Probably for many viewers, this is entirely a science fiction literary film with dyslexia, because it uses the narrative of time dislocation and timeline crossover.
It is the non-linear narrative we often say, so that the audience has the illusion that the flashbacks that continue to appear at the beginning are mistaken for the memories of the heroine after losing her daughter, but this is actually what will happen in the future.
It is not until the end that the audience suddenly realizes that all this has not happened, but it must happen.
I have to say that director Villeneuve's ability to create this atmosphere is very strong, and he accurately restores the "fate" and "tragedy" in the local novel through strong emotional expression.
The sense of apocalypse that a giant alien could destroy humanity and the tragic nature of a happy family going to be broken are intertwined for the audience to see. The huge confrontation and dislocation of the emotional impact, so that the audience has been able to see the end of the film, suddenly and inexplicably moved.
Regarding the design of the alien language, I think it is also a very successful visual adaptation of the film.
In the novel, the description of the alien text is actually vague, and the film uses oriental ink style fonts, which not only has both beauty and imagination, but also makes this language image fit the philosophical ideas of the cycle of Eastern philosophy, enriching the philosophical meaning of this language image.
This may be related to the chinese identity of the original novel Ted Jiang. In fact, the core problem of the film "Arrival" is the problem of communication and choice. The communication in the film exists not only between humans and aliens, but also within humans.
In the exchange with aliens, all countries have selfish intentions, and the results of the exchange are secret and not shared, resulting in a lack of comprehensive understanding of the alien language, resulting in this misunderstanding of the threat of force to the alien creatures. Since then, countries have refused to disclose their interests because of their respective interests. At one point, it caused the crisis of the Great War.
If you knew the results early on, would you still do this?
The kind of international politics depicted in the film in which the great powers compete is indeed the current state of the political environment of the great powers in the world today. The kingdoms of the world secretly played a game that caused the nations to break off contact between them, and like the humans who built the Tower of Babel in the Bible, the plan to go to heaven failed.
In fact, this involves the famous "non-zero-sum game" of economics. In a "non-zero-sum game", the parties to the game are no longer completely opposed, and the game participants are no longer simply "you lose or I gain" relationship, but there is a certain common interest between the participants, that is, win-win or win-win.
This is an indictment of the difficulties of communication between the countries of the world when facing a global crisis, and an appeal to the countries of the world to actively communicate, which is why China has been advocating the principle of "win-win".
In addition to communication, the film is more important to explore the question of how humans choose, we throw out the key questions in the film first, if we know the ending from the beginning, will we continue to follow everything as we have been?
This is the choice dilemma that Louise faces, and both the novel and the film mention "fatalism", which is also the way the aliens in the film think.
In the eyes of the aliens, the past, the present, and the future all coexist, so they came to Earth to teach human language not to seek human help, but because they knew that future humans would help them, and they were just doing what they would do later.
Therefore, instead of experiencing the unknown, know the goal first and then choose the path to the goal. So what happens to human beings under "fatalism"? Even knowing the journey and destination of life, we still choose to embrace it and gladly accept the arrival of every moment.
When Louise foresaw her future, knew that her husband would leave him, knew the tragic fate of her daughter's death, still chose to face the future, obey the fate to fall in love with her husband, to give birth to a daughter, to love her, to take care of her, to accompany her, until the day came, to lose her forever.
If you knew your life in advance, would you change them? In fact, often when the result comes, we will more or less have a variety of premonitions, people will follow the trend, probably expect that life is not like this, struggle or not may not have much change.
These remind me of the line "guessing the beginning" in "Journey to the West": "In fact, the so-called guessing of the beginning is just our inertial premise, if we can embrace the ending, perhaps the process is a surprise that cannot be guessed." ”
Thank you for watching me and taking you to learn more about the entertainment story!