In Joan Osborne's first album, there is a classic "one of us" sings:
What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on a bus Trying to make His way home
If the gods are not high above, if people move their eyes from the sky above their heads to the surrounding scenes, will they still find power and guidance that transcends everything in the underworld?
Many posters of "Arrival" all have the same slogan: Why are they here? The conciseness leaves endless reveries. After walking out of the theater, I once thought of Murphy’s study room in "Interstellar". It seems that the advanced life from the future has saved mankind, but the unknown hero hiding in the dark is the man himself, the prophet of deciphering the signal, and the gathering of all gods. Sex and spirituality, a pioneer of the universe beyond the physical dimension. The two heptapods, always shrouded in the white mist, portray the mentality of human beings peeping at alien species. Starting from similar encounters, the imagination of unknown life always incorporates a series of complex factors such as curiosity and fear, and then countless suspense mysteries and derivative works have been born. There are many categories for listing in the field of film alone. From the sale of the warmth "ET ", the witty "Men in Black", to the simple and rude "Battle of Los Angeles", the positioning varies. What impressed me the most was "The Martians Play the Earth" by Tim Bolton, which showed people's usual impression of aliens in an extremely exaggerated and joking manner, and regarded extraterrestrial civilization as a threat to destroy humans. In the final analysis, this traditional antagonism is rooted in people's inherent protection consciousness. It is not the overwhelming power of the other party that triggers the panic, but the outline that cannot be judged on the mirror. Compared to the violent and barbaric invaders, the aliens in "Arrival" are more like visitors who point the way. Like Cooper who entered the five-dimensional space, they came to the earth with the purpose of saving mankind, and thus responded to the question on the poster: offer Weapon, weapon does not refer to high-end weapons, but language. Many people think that this film eulogizes the greatness of language. As the most stable and direct communication tool across races, words do have the magic power to turn things around. Since human beings have stepped into the written era from the spoken language era, the two trends of re-enchantment and disenchantment around language have been cyclically alternating. As a science fiction film of pure blood, "Arrival" first broke the old narrative perspective with the cutting-edge concept of "linguists save the earth", and relied on freehand ink stains to highlight the ultimate evolution of the text. However, this The realization of a developed system is inseparable from huge data calculations. In the film, deciphering alien languages requires the close cooperation of science and language teams, but in reality it only occurs in the ideal experimental field. The seemingly all-encompassing omnipotent language is basically no different from inventions such as perpetual motion machines. It is only the carrier of the world's beautiful vision. The Wolf hypothesis mentioned in the film believes that the human thinking mode is affected by idiomatic language. Language gives us the power of expression and inevitably restricts the boundaries of thought. In fact, no matter how the combinations of words are ever-changing, they still cannot replace the longitude and latitude of consciousness. For thinking that develops to a higher level, even if its output depends on language, the values at both ends of the formula are not constant. More often, the self-repair of language cannot keep up with the expansion of selfish desires, and can only bring about misunderstandings that cannot be eliminated, just like 12 alien spacecraft hanging high above people's heads, erecting a barrier to normal communication. If the background in the film is placed in a real environment, it is almost impossible to send a professional team to engage in diplomacy. You can say that the fierce gunfire conflicts in films such as "Alien" and "Independence Day" are more in line with human subconscious actions. In the second half of the film, the practice of isolating and fighting each other in the 12 regions is the geopolitics of today. True portrayal. But the starting point of the narrative of "Arrival" is not to reproduce the normal, it aims to inspire people to change the perspective of observing the world, and to introduce long-silent thoughts into a new realm, and this is exactly the core of a hard science fiction masterpiece. From the dilemma of negotiations between countries to repeated dialogue experiments, the film shows us in front of the screen a bloody fact: in the jungle where security is deprived and trust collapsed, the existence of language is far more fragile than people think. Just like Dr. Louise lamented at the base that our language is as chaotic as our culture. Very suggestive lines, expressing the power and decline of language. It can bond people together and provoke disputes. It is the end of fragmentation and the beginning of fragmentation. In the story of the construction of the Tongtian Pagoda, the differentiation of language forces people to flee. Language, etiquette and custom, or any totem with ideological stigma, once infiltrated into the blood and become props for any nation to establish identity and distinguish between enemy and ourselves, they often drive people into dead ends, leading to the collapse of beliefs and a sense of crisis. Enlarged by multiples. Only by returning to the primitive and simple emotions can we find the exact coordinates of life. Therefore, rather than simply praising language, I firmly believe that this work is a tribute to the courage and courage of the human soul. It reminds people of missionaries who have been on mission from generation to generation, marching forward in the sand scorched by the scorching sun, struggling to approach the unreachable truth far away. Similar exploration is always like going back and forth in place, but the closed circle also means endless possibilities in the void. It is precisely because the starting and ending points cannot be seen that they can move forward boldly without any scruples. Amy The linguist played by Adams said in a low voice at the beginning of the film that the order of life is always reset by time and bound by the law of cause and effect. Invisible changes in cause and effect make people slip into loneliness in their struggles. Just a few UFOs that have fallen from the sky are enough to make human civilization that has been accumulated for millions of years face the disintegration of human civilization. The daughter who died young is a cruel explanation. In the face of time, everything has to wait to die and to end in depression. The protagonist’s frosty look from the beginning to the end establishes the film’s inner connotation, analyzing the propositions of emotion and memory in the original work in a calm and steady tone. Just like the non-linear understanding of time by the heptapod barrel, with the help of the method of manufacturing flashbacks, it jumps back and forth between the interweaving of the current and future fragments, using non-zero sum games, paintings on the wall and other scattered key fragments to connect in series. complete information. Until Louise said very softly, "This is the beginning of your life", the tide of memory swept through all kinds of tastes, sprinkling miracles in the ordinary. Even the tough-minded general businessmen terminated the armed plan out of remembrance of his deceased wife in the end. This Zen full of whispers is undoubtedly a kind of open-minded inspiration: it is not time that determines the starting point of life, but the rooting of memory, the budding growth of emotions, and the indelible experience and heart of every minute. Devotion experience. If ordinary science fiction films mostly show people’s worries about the unknown, "Arrival" provides us with another path of choice: instead of fighting or fleeing, it actively embraces fatal composure and penetrates the panic. The covering. It urges us to face the huge established, still holding a calm and normal heart, to accept every moment in the future. The sentence "I foresee all the sorrows, but I am still willing to go", beautiful and moving, enough to be included in the classic lines of the year with profound meaning.
At the end of the film, the soundtrack reveals a healing sorrow. The shadow of the future and reality permeate and blend. The twilight falls and the evening breeze is blowing. Louise snuggles in the arms of her lover and sees her life. You can't see how much burden she is carrying, nor can you tell what is supporting her to continue to look forward to those gaps that are filled. But she still took firm steps, opened the door that exposed everything, and didn't change, nor did she need to change. Human beings are born to death. We can't stop the flow of time, but we can taste the breath in the years along the way and be a humble learner. There is nothing new under the sun. And I think, regardless of experiencing the present or meeting the future, all the joys and regrets, gifts and losses gained on the road of life will eventually become those wonderful words in the novel of life.
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