My September Entry...

 was a review of the movie "Arrival" which ended up posted on imdb.com rather than here on Blogger.com.

Better late than never.  Here's that review, below, title and all.

A genuine sci-fi movie...

......that dealt with ideas rather than bug-eyed monsters, terrifying plot twists and acrobatic physical action. For that reason I gave it a 6 even though some of the dialog was cheesy and scenes cliched.

I was a bit disappointed in the linguistic analysis effort. The linguist did determine, relatively quickly, that the aliens communicated with visual (lightwave-based) symbols rather than verbal/aural (sound-wave based) symbols. (I didn't see any effort to determine if the aliens had the same visual spectrum that we do but let's assume they were simply able to use our visual spectrum.) Having done that you would think she might have tried a graphic of a hydrogen atom as a starting point for mutual understanding. Or perhaps a depiction of our solar system and galaxy -- especially as one, essential question was "Where do you come from?" How hard would it have been for us to point to us, then to earth, and the aliens to add to the drawing their own far-away home?

One member of the science team indicated that they were able to repeat back to us a series of prime numbers even though they "couldn't understand our algebra". What number symbols was he using? And what numbering system? -- base 7 (since they had 7 legs and 7 fingers)? Or binary (which might have made the most sense)? As I said, some of the dialog was cheesy.

Also -- we, meaning not only the Americans but the Chinese and other countries, managed to mis-interpret their word "gift" for "weapon" -- a rather grave mistake, and one not believable given the team's ingenuity in determining the meaning of other, more ambiguous words.

But that misinterpretation was necessary to add at least a little bit of action and suspense.

And then, the "gift" turned out to be tlhe language, itself, which, if you mastered it, gave you the ability to see all your life at once, past-present-and-future. Yes, learning a different language or even increased vocabulary in your native tongue, can enhance your ability to perceive and analyze the world. But seeing the future is a bit much to ask of linguistics, alone!

All in all, this movie was a good effort, even though flawed. I was glad I watched it.