Have you ever had an experience of finding a piece of good work unintentionally? As midterm approaching, I spent a good amount of time cramming my Linguistics. When I was reading the linguistic relativism in the morpheme chapter, there’s an idea called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that caught my eyes. Basically, this hypothesis suggests that language can influence how humans think and act, and thus affect the way humans perceive the world. It really got me curious, and therefore I went to WIKI page to look up for more information. To my surprise, such academic topic can be the theme of a short story, that is Story of Your Life. This short story is later on adapted for the film ARRIVAL. The storyline is about aliens visiting Earth out of the blue, and the main character Louise, a linguistic expert, being conscripted into the team of interpreting alien language to figure out why they are here. As Louise learns more about their language, she discovers more about the human language. To be more specific, human’s linear chronological thinking can affect people’s notion of time (Webster, 2017). In contrast, the alien language is not hardwired to chronological thinking. Most of the film content is faithful to its original story, but in order to bring the core meaning of the story to the screenplay, there are some changes in the film.

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          The first obvious difference that the audience can easily notice is the story sequence. Both the book and film incorporate flashforwards of Louise’s daughter, Hannah, while she worked on the alien task in the past, but the shot sequence in the film is rearranged. While the short story constantly intersperses the experience in the past with aliens and the future with Hannah in a regular consequence, the flashforwards are shown in the beginning and later stages of the movie. By doing so, the audience can follow up Louise’s consciousness as she learns more about the alien language. The audience can realize that Louise’s memories with her daughter are the visions of the future after they understand the concept with Louise, as if the audience themselves learn with her in the film.

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          The second difference appears in whether aliens touch down on the Earth or not. In the film, aliens pilot several giant vessels to different places on the Earth, whereas aliens in the short story send only special mirrors, which are the devices to communicate, to Earth. With aliens appearing at human’s front doors, it creates tension among humans. People engage in various acts such as robbery, riots, suicide, express anger towards government, and some even advocate preemptive attacks on the aliens. These conflicts are merely mentioned in the short story, whereas the film sprinkles the conflict scenes to escalate the awareness of direct threats. If the aliens in the film never touch down the Earth like the ones in the short story, then there won’t be conflicts to exert pressure on the characters in the film.

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          The third difference lies in how Louise’s daughter dies. Both short story and film indicate the death of the daughter in the beginning of the story, but they have different causes of death. In the story, a climbing accident results in her death. On the other hand, she suffers and dies from an incurable disease in the film. Obviously, the reason for this change is to make sure the choice Louise made in the film matters, because she needs to be able to change the future to have her daughter. She still chooses to have the love of her daughter despite knowing that Hannah will die eventually. Louise in the short story, however, believes in determinism. She believes that the future has all been written, yet she still embraces the inevitable. How Hannah dies makes a difference about Louise’s choice matters or not.

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          The fourth difference is whether aliens convey the reason why they are on Earth. In the short story, aliens don’t reveal the purpose of arriving, and they also leave in a sudden; however, ARRIVAL alters this setting, making aliens show their desire of helping humans in the end. But it’s not hard to see the reasons why they are here are identical in both short story and film versions. Again, the reason for this change is because of the tension. People desperately want to know aliens’ motivations, and when the situation is in the height of tension, they finally express their desire to help, which resolves the possibility of declaring war on aliens.

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          To sum up, there are four differences between the original short story and film, such as story sequence and plots. Different mediums are adopted in the film to meet our expectations of what a movie is while it still conveys the same spirit of the short story. By using Sci-fi, the story makes me reflect on what people are and how people can do from a different worldview. Despite the changes in the film, the story still successfully delivers its core moral lessons by creating a scenario where humans encounter the unknowingness. People can take the visit of aliens as a looking glass to reflect human’s own condition. On the surface, humans are trying to communicate with aliens, but it turns out that we are actually trying to communicate to ourselves. Personally, I adore the book more, since I really like the concept of free will and destiny. But the movie is not bad either, it conveys the valuable lesson that the biggest threats usually comes from human insecurity and people themselves. As Pearson (2019) suggests that, “all the conflicts come from us”.

 

 

References

Pearson, B. (2019, May 16). Video essay compares arrival to the short story on which it’s based. GeekTyrant. https://geektyrant.com/news/video-essay-compares-arrival-to-the-short-story-on-which-its-based

Webster, G. & Horwitz-White, J. (2017, May 5). Who did it better: “Story of your life” vs. “arrival.” Fiction Unbound. https://www.fictionunbound.com/blog/2017/2/2/who-did-it-better-story-of-your-life-vs-arrival