By Brad Allenby (LSI Faculty Fellow)
The cult movie The Matrix (the first in the series; the others were lightweight by comparison) is perhaps best appreciated as an extended soliloquy on Descartes. Similarly, Arrival can be appreciated as an extended meditation on a blending of Einstein and Nietzsche: Einstein for his famous remark in a letter to a recently deceased friend’s grieving family (“For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”), and Nitzsche for his doctrine that in the fullness of time, all things reoccur endlessly (“Everything becomes and recurs eternally – escape is impossible!”), and that such a reality can only be embraced by one who is truly the ubermench, the overman, the superior individual of the future.
On top of that, it is a good movie. It is far better than most of the self-indulgent quasi-documentary ruminations on various technologies that seem to be so popular these days, because it is coherent and doesn’t bury normative railings under a false patina of pretended objectivity. It is also far better than most scifi, because it eschews the violence and simplicity of the space opera genre which remains so popular – and deservedly so . . . a good space opera is a fun piece of escapism which shouldn’t be denigrated unnecessarily. But Arrival operates on a different level, not unlike a few other recent scifi gems such as Ex Machina: the story flows not around action, but around plot and ideas. And, like the best in its field, it takes complex ideas and makes them visual, and thus real and accessible. So, while you won’t learn much about the Internet, you will enjoy a good movie, and might even end up asking yourself: could I, like Louise, embrace Nietzsche’s challenge?
Reviewer’s grade: A-