Arrival is not a movie that I particularly like. It is a very good movie, it moved me and I even read the short story that the movie is based on after watching it. But I won’t watch it again. Renner was there and I can barely tolerate him. And when the magic of first time viewing has gone, the movie is no longer interesting to me.

But the story, both in the book and in the movie, is a very good one. Firstly, it talks about language and how it affects the way its speakers think. Secondly, it has a new, at least for me, and very interesting take on time and determinism concept.

“How we talk influences how we are” – This is not some groundbreaking idea. Many linguists have argued about it, although we need to be skeptical about anything that could potentially lend arguments to racism. Of course, that doesn’t mean if we talk and write in non linear way, or a closed circular way, we can know the future, like in this movie. But the way this idea was presented in the movie, and more so in the short story, is very clever.

“If  you know the future, what would you do?” – there were many possible answers, and I read them all. In this story, the answer is “We do nothing about it”. This one is new, it is not the most logical, I would probably do it differently. But somehow I see it, I see how we can react like that. It is not like you complacently accept fate, you are living it out, or you “perform” your life, like the story said.