communicate but not communicate

Alexane 2022-04-23 07:01:06

The movie "Arrival" was a hit, but snoring could also be heard during the film's screening. This movie, adapted from a novel, is not a suspenseful thriller, it can be said to be a backdoor listing. To be fair, the two-line parallel structure in the original novel is indeed difficult to show in film language, but it would be a failure to completely abandon the original idea. In other words, when the film is four-fifths of the way through, the original advantages—the literary atmosphere in the rhythm and the brilliance in the shots are ruined by the rough Chinese plot setting and the poor Mandarin Chinese. The overall temperament of the film is close to that of the novel, but it seems to have improved in scale, but in the end, it loses to the novel in terms of layout. The novel revolves around linguistics, physics, love in the world, and cognition of things and life. It is described interactively in format, and the suspense of the structure gradually gets better. The film is better than the figurative light and shadow and ingenious sci-fi elements to bring the audience a fresh visual impact. The themes of love and cognition in the novel are completely themes of communication in the film.

Communication is difficult, even for the same species. Think about how many misunderstandings and conflicts you have with people in your daily life are due to poor communication. Because language cannot express exactly what you think in the first place. When the language is not fluent, it can lead to misunderstandings and even disasters. There are several hints in the movie for later plots. For example, the origin of the word kangaroo is a misunderstanding caused by the language of the local natives that the white people do not understand, and this misunderstanding is still in use today. And most notably, Ian gave the two aliens names: Abbott and Costello. The two names come from the 1950s comedy TV show "Albert and Castro". The two actors have a classic joke called "Who's on first", which clashes around the phrase: Who's on first, What's on second, and I don't know is on third. But Who, What, and I don't know here are actually the names of three people, which caused misunderstandings and jokes in communication. A fairy tale about the three little pigs and the mad wolf is also a wonderful interpretation of this language banter. In Chinese culture, it has the same effect as Ma Sanli's classic comic "Fun with You".

The communication difficulties in the film not only exist in the chicken-and-duck talk between humans and alien creatures, but also exist between human countries. All countries are communicating with alien creatures, but they all have their own selfish interests and keep the exchange results secret. Not sharing, not communicating with each other, to be precise, not communicating with each other, resulting in an incomplete understanding of alien languages, resulting in a misunderstanding that alien creatures pose a threat of force. After that, countries became more stubborn and refused to be open and honest about matters, thus creating a crisis. In the future dimension in the movie, through the mouth of the little girl Hannah, I asked my mother, who is a linguist, what a word that represents a win-win situation. My mother replied that it is a non-zero-sum game. In a non-zero-sum game, the players are no longer completely opposed, and what one player gains does not necessarily mean that the other players suffer the same amount of losses. That is to say, there is no such a simple relationship as "what you gain is what I lose" between game participants. One of the implicit meanings is that there may be some kind of common interests among the participants, which implies a very important concept in game theory that only "win-win" or "multi-win" is involved in the game. This plot should be an indictment of the difficulties in communication between countries in the world in their own way when faced with a global crisis, and a call for active communication among countries around the world. Considering that the world pattern has been in the silt of poor communication, it is still necessary to praise the vision of mutual understanding given by the film.

The Chinese elements in the film account for a large proportion, and even the calligraphy of the aliens seems to be inherited from ancient Chinese freehand brushwork. But other than that, how other related settings look like after saying that China is strong and become mindless and unhappy. The first is refusal to share the results of communication with alien creatures, and the second is the alien who blindly admits to death, is shocked when he hears the wind, breaks the horse and Zhang Fei regardless of the consequences, and is about to fight the alien. From a Western point of view, it is also possible to use films to vent the poor communication between the world. I don’t advertise anti-Western populism, but this kind of plot that successfully turned things around with just a few pacifist empty words made me fall. Appetite, which also directly led to the overall decline in the quality of the movie. Regardless of national innuendo and ideology, it is the crudeness of this part of the plot that discourages the whole work, and it is the film's use of simple and crude means to express the simplicity and crudeness of other countries that loses points. Weaving baskets, weaving baskets, everything is closing, this film with the theme of communication did not communicate well with the audience at the last moment, and one bad move ruined everything, which can also be called a lack of communication.

The heroine explains to her daughter the palindrome of the name Hannah in the future, that is, the spelling of the word is the same whether from left to right or right to left, thus alluding to the circular narrative of the film's plot, meaning understanding the entire Movies have to look at the big picture. Similarly, the alien creatures in the film teach humans to look at things in a global way through language, trying to convince humans to change the way of looking at the world from a relationship of purpose to a relationship of sharing, which of course also includes other species and civilizations in the universe. At the end of the movie, the heroine dressed in costume wears nautilus-shaped earrings and listens to the whispers of the Chinese general. The shape of the nautilus echoes the golden section, Fibonacci sequence and pi mentioned in the previous episodes. Both represent infinity and are the keys to understanding the entire deep universe.
Public number: Ding Shendeng

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Extended Reading

Arrival quotes

  • Agent Halpern: We're a world with no single leader. It's impossible to deal with just one of us.

  • Louise Banks: Trust me, you can, uh, understand communication and still end up single.