jakob
Full Member
Posts: 827
Likes: 698
|
Post by jakob on Mar 1, 2017 2:22:16 GMT
Spoilers obviously.
Leaving the theater I felt gobsmacked. But I started hearing an argument from my boyfriend about why the movie does not work. Essentially, with the twist being that Louise will have a daughter and the daughter is destined to die, why does she go ahead and accept a life that is going to end miserably for everyone? As I understood, she felt such a strong connection to her daughter, she wanted to give birth to her anyway despite the fact that the daughter would suffer. She also chooses not to tell Ian until it's too late (a decision she already knows the outcome of). This causes Ian to feel so emotionally detached from Louise that he abandons the family, leaving his life in shambles. While Louise may have made the decision to make sure the universe goes exactly as planned, it wasn't guaranteed to change anything. Louise still adopted the language from the aliens which they would still use to communicate with them and be embedded into our own world as a second language. Three thousand years from now, Louise would have died multiple generations ago. My one complaint with the film originally was that the events of the future were so vague that it doesn't justify Louise's actions. Thinking about it, had the film ended with Louise parting ways from Ian, and leaving the rest of the future up to chance, it would have given the film the same emotional levity yet would have a stronger, more justifiable ending. While it doesn't necessarily affect my enjoyment of the movie because I do still find it flawlessly made, it does leave me with complicated feelings.
|
|
Javi
Badass
Posts: 1,530
Likes: 1,619
|
Post by Javi on Mar 1, 2017 2:55:36 GMT
It feels like the least interesting aspect of the movie in retrospect. The concept of losing a child is so powerful that Amy Adams becoming a sort of cosmic love martyr works anyway, even if the daughter is just an idealized image and not a real character. But the first half of the movie, with its obsession with language and the whole otherness of the aliens, is far far better.
|
|
|
Post by Ryan_MYeah on Mar 1, 2017 2:58:23 GMT
I feel like what gives the movie its power is how it relays those emotional choices and big reveals. So much of what gives the movie its heart (in addition to the value of communication and compassion) is in how it confronts those issues of grief and acceptance. Often we treat time as an enemy robbing us of the ones we love, and when it comes to thinking about the day that those people we love meet their end, or when we meet our own end, we choose to ignore it and close ourselves off rather than to confront those issues, and take the experiences as they come. Sure, Lou could have made changes to spare herself of the heartbreak that she'll inevitably suffer, but doing so would have denied her the happiness that time with her daughter gave her as well, and there's no guarantee any minor or major changes would have affected anything at all. By choosing to follow through with those decisions, she's made peace with the inevitable, but still gets to enjoy that precious time spent together. It's probably the happiest and saddest moment of the film, and doesn't fail to make me shed a tear thinking about it.
|
|
|
Post by countjohn on Mar 1, 2017 3:18:47 GMT
I liked the ending better the second time. I viewed it in too banal of a way the first time and went along for the ride more on the rewatch.
I don't find it unrealistic at all that she'd still want to have her daughter. I'm guessing the OP doesn't have kids. Not that I do either, but just because a loved one dies young doesn't mean you wish they'd never existed in the first place. "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a 100% true cliche.
|
|
jakob
Full Member
Posts: 827
Likes: 698
|
Post by jakob on Mar 1, 2017 3:45:10 GMT
I liked the ending better the second time. I viewed it in too banal of a way the first time and went along for the ride more on the rewatch. I don't find it unrealistic at all that she'd still want to have her daughter. I'm guessing the OP doesn't have kids. Not that I do either, but just because a loved one dies young doesn't mean you wish they'd never existed in the first place. "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a 100% true cliche. See, that I 100% understood. I don't have kids, nor do I believe I will, but that would be a very understandable parent decision. It does make me feel, though, that Ian's character is kind of given the shitty end of the deal. On one end, his character is thoroughly likable and engaging and for him to turn on his family feels like a betrayal of the character. I kind of understand why Louise's inevitable reveal would compel him to do that, but given the strength of his relationship with Louise throughout the film and his parting words at the end of the film, it doesn't seem like a move he would have made so after having been in a romantic relationship with Louise for so long. And if Louise had explained more in depth of why their child had to be born, even if it was explained before conception, I would think someone as smart and trustworthy as Ian would understand. He did nearly sacrifice his own life for Louise to make a phone call she wouldn't explain to him about. I guess knowing that Ian and Louise weren't supposed to work as a couple is a tad unsatisfying. My boyfriend does really side with Ian so a lot of it for him is frustration that he was treated so poorly at the end of the film.
|
|
|
Post by theycallmemrfish on Mar 1, 2017 3:55:07 GMT
Did for me, at least.
|
|
|
Post by mikediastavrone96 on Mar 1, 2017 3:59:54 GMT
In addition to what Ryan_MYeah said, I also want to bring up that we don't really know how Louise's perception of time totally functions. Everything in the film unfolds exactly as it's supposed to, so while she does have agency in any individual moment, could she make a different decision? Or, better yet, would she really want to; if one could see their entire life laid out before them, all the joys and heartache, the love and loss, would they want to change that? I do understand the issue with Ian's treatment, but there's nothing to say that if she could or even did change something (either having Hannah to begin with or telling him that she knew her fate) that everything between them would work out, and Louise is okay with her choices as she sees them.
|
|
|
Post by cornnetto on Mar 1, 2017 4:29:32 GMT
The time mechanics are not clear and it become a bit blurry as well I think, past, future, present are not that distinct anymore, she start having a hard time to tell when she is.
I did find it to work extremely well at a gut level (I don't know if it is not full or plot hole and certainly didn't try to find any), that mother that decide to have a child that will die at a young age (in the short story it is at an older age from an climbing accident or something like that, that give a different view in term of how little control or want in changing the time line she had, but could not be made without not aging the mother in a movie and stealing the punch).
We see from the movie that her experience with her daughter nourish her decision making in the "past", the concept of zero sum game for example came from that future where her daughter exist, so if she change anything, if that is an option, she would maybe break something and loose the ability to save the world. Regardless of that I think she want to live that experience and she do not want to deny to that person she know and love existence, her baggage of experience and what she brought to the world event during her short live, there is a part where she list the life her daughter affected.
I thought it was by far the best moment of the movie, I don't think filmmakers/writers had much interest into the : How we would speak to aliens in that scenario (starting with English words seem a really strange strategy and most of it made no sense at all to me, you would built language from universal reality those space traveler would know, if you draw H20 and show water, point on a drawing of our solar system showing that earth is the 3 planet and so on you can start using the same maths, chemistry formula and so on) and was not that good on that part, it was more interest in language in generals and was better on that side.
|
|
|
Post by therealcomicman117 on Mar 1, 2017 5:28:55 GMT
I still think it works extremely well. I like how optimistic the ending of the film, and I think it makes complete sense that Louise would want to be with her daughter again, even considering what had happened.
|
|
|
Post by countjohn on Mar 1, 2017 6:26:59 GMT
I liked the ending better the second time. I viewed it in too banal of a way the first time and went along for the ride more on the rewatch. I don't find it unrealistic at all that she'd still want to have her daughter. I'm guessing the OP doesn't have kids. Not that I do either, but just because a loved one dies young doesn't mean you wish they'd never existed in the first place. "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a 100% true cliche. See, that I 100% understood. I don't have kids, nor do I believe I will, but that would be a very understandable parent decision. It does make me feel, though, that Ian's character is kind of given the shitty end of the deal. On one end, his character is thoroughly likable and engaging and for him to turn on his family feels like a betrayal of the character. I kind of understand why Louise's inevitable reveal would compel him to do that, but given the strength of his relationship with Louise throughout the film and his parting words at the end of the film, it doesn't seem like a move he would have made so after having been in a romantic relationship with Louise for so long. And if Louise had explained more in depth of why their child had to be born, even if it was explained before conception, I would think someone as smart and trustworthy as Ian would understand. He did nearly sacrifice his own life for Louise to make a phone call she wouldn't explain to him about. I guess knowing that Ian and Louise weren't supposed to work as a couple is a tad unsatisfying. My boyfriend does really side with Ian so a lot of it for him is frustration that he was treated so poorly at the end of the film. We just don't really see the dissolution of the relationship so it's hard to feel like the character was betrayed at all. Marriages very often have serious issues and break up when a child is terminally ill or dies even if the relationship was previously healthy so I don't find it hard to believe in the abstract
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2017 15:52:16 GMT
The reveal was the best part of the movie (but that's not saying much)
|
|
|
Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Mar 1, 2017 16:40:37 GMT
It absolutely works and holds up for me.
|
|
|
Post by nic-dreadwolf-marling on Mar 2, 2017 3:01:46 GMT
Her decision is basically essential. She has no other choice. It was through her future and her daughter that the aliens were able to convey their meaning to her, and help her see time the way they did in a nonlinear fashion. It was only then would she truly be able to learn, understand, and be able to teach their language. Had she altered her decision to have her daughter she would've effectively created a new timeline for every decision that was made thereafter. Though since the film doesn't touch on timelines, dimensions, or many universes we can pretty much scrap that method of thinking. What it does insinuate though is that she may have never had a choice. She is now experiencing time nonlinear. Past, present, and future are happening simultaneously for her. There would be no way she could change anything after seeing how it all plays out. She's not time traveling or becoming omnipotent. She is seeing all events of her life happen on a moving wheel. She is just an observer crippled with the knowledge of her future.
Or since she does see time nonlinear now and in a sense sees the future since it is happening currently to her she knows where this all leads during her lifetime and how invaluable it is to the universe and for the development of the human race.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2017 23:17:46 GMT
Oh yes.
|
|