CT: Arrival
Okay, so I'm two days late and the only excuse I have is that Little C and I were in the desert for a few days visiting family and it seemed waaaay more important to eat cookies and hang out in the hot tub than it did to write my post. Someday I'll get the hang of preparing posts ahead of time when I'm going out of town. Promise. Cait assigned me the word egregious so that's gonna be fun to work in.
Here's the problem, dear readers: what the h do we even write about? It still feels a little bit like the world ended last week and it's been real hard to say "Well, did anyone see Arrival?" How can we talk about science fiction movies when one of the most egregiously dangerous men possible is about to be running our country?
Except, as always seems to happen with art, that's EXACTLY what we should be talking about when egregiously dangerous people are in charge. Hasn't that always been the role of art, to help us talk about what's going on in our world? It seemed to me that Arrival came out at the exact right time, and for sure I saw it at the exact right time.
I promise to give as little of the movie away as possible, except to say that if you haven't seen it, you absolutely should. It's not the "shoot 'em up" alien movie you're used to and that's a really really good thing. It's brilliantly written, hanging constantly on the edge of what possible things can happen. Aliens arrive on Earth and humans are stuck between two options, afraid that either choice could be an egregious mistake. Either we jump into defensive mode and fight them or we try to communicate with them.
Amy Adams plays a linguist who's brought in by the US government to try and find a way to communicate with the aliens, to see why they're here and what they want. She does not have an easy job. At any point she could make a mistake that has dire consequences. But at every point she chooses to err on the side of hope and try to make a bridge between humans and aliens that could not be further from human.
Here's where the movie got me- it is so hopeful. At a time when I feel like it's hard to see hope in the world, this movie is so full of hope. Hope in what we're capable of as humans. Hope for the world that we call home. Hope that we could maybe see eye to eye with those who seem alien to us. Hope that this egregious lying misogynistic/racist won't ruin all the things we love about our country.
I might have projected that last bit.
Happy watching. Be kind to each other.
CT
Here's the problem, dear readers: what the h do we even write about? It still feels a little bit like the world ended last week and it's been real hard to say "Well, did anyone see Arrival?" How can we talk about science fiction movies when one of the most egregiously dangerous men possible is about to be running our country?
Except, as always seems to happen with art, that's EXACTLY what we should be talking about when egregiously dangerous people are in charge. Hasn't that always been the role of art, to help us talk about what's going on in our world? It seemed to me that Arrival came out at the exact right time, and for sure I saw it at the exact right time.
I promise to give as little of the movie away as possible, except to say that if you haven't seen it, you absolutely should. It's not the "shoot 'em up" alien movie you're used to and that's a really really good thing. It's brilliantly written, hanging constantly on the edge of what possible things can happen. Aliens arrive on Earth and humans are stuck between two options, afraid that either choice could be an egregious mistake. Either we jump into defensive mode and fight them or we try to communicate with them.
Amy Adams plays a linguist who's brought in by the US government to try and find a way to communicate with the aliens, to see why they're here and what they want. She does not have an easy job. At any point she could make a mistake that has dire consequences. But at every point she chooses to err on the side of hope and try to make a bridge between humans and aliens that could not be further from human.
Here's where the movie got me- it is so hopeful. At a time when I feel like it's hard to see hope in the world, this movie is so full of hope. Hope in what we're capable of as humans. Hope for the world that we call home. Hope that we could maybe see eye to eye with those who seem alien to us. Hope that this egregious lying misogynistic/racist won't ruin all the things we love about our country.
I might have projected that last bit.
Happy watching. Be kind to each other.
CT
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