My husband and I watched "Arrival" last night again. It's a favorite of ours and we have the DVD. Ironically, it is not just Louise Banks who is unmoored from linear time, but us as we watch. And the certainty she has of her daughter's death and her ultimate decision to conceive knowing what is coming is actually what we all face. We bring children into the world knowing they, as we all do, are going to die. So living becomes those treasured moments between birth and death, and we need to slow down and be awake and aware of each minute experience. I love the moments Louise "sees". Big ones like her daughter's diagnosis and death, little ones like playing tickle fingers in the back yard, watching her splash in rubber boots, rubbing noses with Hannah when she is a baby. There is an equality to all those moments, because each is fully lived.
As Louise slowly understands the speech of the septopods, she enters their world, through symbols and empathy. When we learn another language, we also embrace a different culture and worldview. But all of us, earthbound or not, face extinction. It's what makes us "human".
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