I saw it last night and enjoyed it a lot. I thought the “wrong choice” Louise made that Ian was unhappy about was telling him Hannah was going to die. It caused Ian to look at Hannah differently and it was probably too painful to be around her. He’d rather not have known until she fell ill.
I took her book as a memoir about how she discovered the language, not to teach the world to speak heptapod. She brought all 12 together and they got whatever info they needed plus ushered in an era of global cooperation.
They don’t “remember” anything exactly. They are similar to the Prophets in Deep Space 9. They exist outside of linear time. There is no before and after for them, it all happens at once. If time is a river, humans (and most other things) are in a canoe flowing on the river. The aliens are high above and can see the entire river from start to finish. So, yeah, as we perceive it, in 3000 years they will need us for something so in what we perceive as now, they visit and set us on a path to fulfill that need.
Admittedly, the idea that their language can give us a taste of that perception is a little hand wavey but I felt the story earned that one gimmie.
I think the father left because he could not handle knowing his daughter was doomed to die as a child. As I wrote above that’s awful but understandable.
I thought that element was unfortunate in an otherwise serious film - the fantasy idea that understanding a concept gives you super-powers. It’s kind of like what Scientologists promise once you go “clear”, or what Vonnegut described in his short story “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”.
Frankly, I was starting to lose patience with the dead-kid subplot, seeing it as a shoehorned-in personal drama just to pad out and distract from what was otherwise a fairly dry but interesting-to-nerds-such-as-myself effort at breaching a language barrier.
I didn’t expect Independence day, but I did expect an interesting sci-fi movie. . . however I did not get that.
I really didn’t find the story thought-provoking. I didn’t care about the characters. I thought the way the “international stuff” was handled was almost cartoonish and not very believable. I really hated it.
But, I don’t like it when astounding discoveries are the topic and the story ends up focusing on relatively minor personal relationships. I don’t give a damn about the woman and her daughter. . . aliens just landed and handed us a language that transcends time!
That’s funny because the story of her child and what was really happening there was the core of the movie to me and what elevated it to something I really enjoyed. It was more than a sub plot, it really made the entire movie.
Yeah, for me the story wasn’t “OMG aliens have landed!!” It was “would you still carry on your life the same way knowing it would end up with the tragic death of your child?”
For the main character, turns out it was worth having her daughter in her life even for a short time.
The story of the aliens landing was just the delivery system for this film’s “message.” And that’s how science fiction is supposed to work.
Well, if the main character had a choice in the matter, couldn’t she have said “We could make a baby… but can we wait a month or two?” That way they’d end up with a *different *baby, preferably one less cancerbound. It’s not like when Renner asks the question, that’s their one-and-only chance to conceive.
Anyway, people have deathlocked babies all the time. Aliens, though… whoa.
But again, that happens if they have that particular baby at that particular time. Given the utter genetic randomness involved, waiting a month could yield a baby with slightly different and hopefully not cancer-prone DNA. The baby could even be male.
If Adams and Renner (I can’t remember their character names) both have some kind of recessive gene that guarantees that any child they conceive will be doomed to an early death, maybe they could, y’know… adopt? I don’t see how Adams’s choice is the optimal one, nor why there’s any nobility in taking that choice.
A lot of people have been comparing this to Interstellar, and I agree for much the same reason. Both movies start out with a good sci-fi idea (exploring the galaxy for a new homeworld, how to communicate with aliens) and then in the last act leave it behind for a mashup of theoretical physics and philosophy. I wanted to know more about the aliens and less about Amy Adams’ cancer kid.
Then she didn’t have a choice, or at least not an informed one, if she could only see the future with Hannah and not the one with Bob, or Ava, or Elle, or (heh) Renner, or any of her potential palindromic, possibly noncancerous children.
Sure she had a choice. She chose reliving her life with that child, even if it was shortened, than choosing to have a different child. That was the whole point of the last conversation: would you choose that life even if you knew that sadness was part of it. She chose yes, because the love she felt for Hannah was more real than hypothetical love for a different child.
Her mother was alive. She called and spoke to Louise about the arrival of the aliens.
Okay, her dad could have left it to her. But yeah, I thought about the house, too. It’s like in Superman (the first movie): I will believe a man can fly before I believe a reporter could afford Lois Lane’s apartment.
Otherwise, I thought the movie was good. It occurred to me that if it had been made pre-Google, there would have been subtitles when she called the general. Now the director knew people would have looked it up.
But it’s all hypothetical, until it actually happens. If she had a choice, she could have said “no” to conceiving a child at that time. Does she get to see her future life in that case - which is not necessarily a childless future - or not? Is Hannah the best child she could have hoped for? That’s a pretty bleak notion.
The important thing is the notion of choice. And there’s no right answer in a movie like that. It forms the basis of discussion here - and elsewhere - about whether she made the right choice. It’s possible to argue it from both perspectives and for different people to have different, completely valid, opinions.
That, my friends, is what makes it a good movie and good art.
