Arrival- totally filled with SPOILERS!!

[gettingolderbutcooler]

I do want to preface this by saying I've seen Arrival a few times and love it- but think I've missed a few things.
I know she's seeing the future ahead (child, child dying etc) and the aliens are saying they have come to help earth as they themselves will need to be helped in 3000 years.
But what did they help earth with before they disappeared again?
And also I think their smoke signs should have been called very complicated emojis. 🤣

I love this film. As I understand it, they perceive time differently to us. By teaching us their language, they help us to understand time as they perceive it, which will give humans the ability to help them in the future by knowing what is coming. Like a paradox. It's based on a short story which I haven't read but DH says is quite different - i keep meaning to go and read it but have not had the chance yet.

They help human society unite cooperatively by giving each of the countries above which a spacecraft arrived one twelfth of their message, meaning the countries need to come together to decipher it.

Learning the alien language involves accessing a non-linear experience of time, so you see the future. As well as ‘seeing’ the birth and death of her future daughter with Donnelly, Louise ‘sees’ a UN event celebrating world peace at which a Chinese general thanks her for stopping him mounting an attack by phoning him and convincing him of the worth of the language by telling him something she couldn’t possibly know, what his dying wife said to him, on his private number. In the ‘present’, Louise thus knows to steal a phone and call him, thereby stopping a military attack and global panic, and prompting the Chinese to release their twelfth of the aliens’ message.

It’s Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life’, and yes, quite different. There’s no ‘global’ reach and the stakes are lower — Louise only sees her own future when she learns the alien language, there’s none of the ‘promoting global cooperation’ plot line, and the aliens never explain why they come or why they leave when they do.

I like the idea of the time concept. I got that (and the dissonance of her getting the Chinese generals phone number etc in the future to help in the past).
So you think what they gave us was the unification of earth? I thought there was talk about building something based on plans they gave earth?
But they also said they'd need our help in 3000 years... not sure what that was about.
Loved Amy Adams in it too.

https://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/Reading/Chiang-story.pdf

If anyone’s interested, here’s the short story it’s based on.

Thanks! Going to look at this tonight when I'm on the late shift with DD2!

I think the ‘building something’ was based on the Chinese interpretation of what Louise reads as ‘use tool’ as ‘use weapon’ (I think because the Chinese linguists were using a competitive game, Mah Jong, to communicate with the aliens). I don’t remember whether we ever hear any more detail what exactly is going to cause them to need earth’s help in 3000 years.

I was just glancing at the story, and had forgotten quite how different it was — much more interested in the detail of the alien language, free will, maths and physics, there’s no explanation for the aliens’ visit, her daughter lives into adulthood, dies in some kind of accident, and Louise remarries when her daughter is still young. And the ‘present’ of the story from which Louise is speaking is before she and Donnelly conceive their daughter, so all of her ‘memories’ of her life and death are precognitions.

@EggshellAttic
That latter bit is the same as the film isn't it? In her present, daughter isn't born etc.
yes that's an interesting point you and pp mention of what they bring, and its meaning.

This is one of my favourite films, I thought Amy Adams was excellent.

I found her choosing to experience the joy - and the pain - of loosing her daughter hugely powerful. That classic "If you knew then what you know now, would you make the same choice...?"

Yes, that was heartbreaking....😢