Arrival is a science fiction movie directed by Dennis Villeneuve and written by Erik Heiser. It is based on Ted Chiang's novel "The Story of Your Life" and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forrest Whitaker.
It was one of the few "elitist" films (in terms of depth of release) that achieved impressive commercial success in terms of revenue on the one hand and satisfaction of critics on the other hand.
In my opinion, what distinguishes this movie from other popular science fiction movies that draw at least some of its details from scientific theories is the following:
Usually such films tend to use some theoretical physics concepts and then go on to apply them to imaginary applications, as is the case with the film Interstellar, which, although it adopts some sound scientific data on the topics of gravity, time flow and black holes, but it goes beyond scientifically in making events as if allowed For someone to enter a black hole and exit unscathed without being crushed by gravity!
Perhaps this was the first science fiction movie that was one of the foundations of a human theory in linguistics, not just theoretical physics, as will be detailed later.
The dramatic plot in the film overlapped with the scientific axes on which it was built in a wonderful way, so that it does not appear that one side is imposed on the other, as in many science fiction films.
Linguistic relativism: It is one of the theories of linguistics that suggest that our perception of the world is limited by the language we use (because we do not use language for the purpose of communication only, but we use it as a tool for thinking as well), and since the vocabulary of any language has an accumulated cultural and civilizational dimension, so our understanding of the world around us is based on language That we talk and think about.
General Relativity: As proposed by the physicist Albert Einstein, which is based on the idea that time is a fourth dimension of the three spatial dimensions, and accordingly, the concept of the flow of time and its division of the present, past and future is an illusion imposed on us by the limited awareness of our limited awareness of the three space dimensions that divide the cosmic space (space + Time) into a series of three-dimensional projections, and the sequence in its perception forms the illusion of feeling the passage of time, while temporal space is in fact one connected mass in which the present, the past and the future coincide and in which one moment is not distinguished from another, which is what Albert Einstein meant when he said: The passage of time is an illusion, however urgent it is. "
By linking the two previous relativities, one can understand the basic plot of the film. The linguist in the film, and through her learning of the language of aliens, was able to see the world from the perspective of these beings based on the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, and since these objects do not deal with time linearly (which is another way) To put forward the topic of the overlap of the present, the past and the future), this linguist succeeded in orienting the "future" and using its data in the "present" time, and this understanding was deeply reflected in her private life and consequently the sequence of events in the film, which she described as "the overlap of beginnings and ends." And she ended up accepting the fate and accepting the idea of her daughter's death even before she was pregnant!
Another strange scientific idea that the movie touched upon is what is called the name of Reverse Causality, which is derived from physical quantum theory (not Einstein's relativity), although it is related to it, and its simple meaning is that what you do in the future can affect the present. Doing it in the present can influence the past, an idea that completely contradicts the axioms of human perception, but has been validated at the level of elementary particles in a scientific experiment famous for the name of the delayed quantum effect; As it became evident when conducting this experiment that the mechanism of monitoring a particular elementary particle in the present affects the particle’s past and makes it choose a certain path in the past! It is the idea that this film inspired when the heroine used a future talk with a Chinese general to convince him of her view of the present, which convinced him to accept what she requested from sharing information between countries.
Although what was mentioned above seems not reasonable and it is certainly not self-evident, but rather contradictory to the axioms that we accept, there are scientific theoretical and laboratory foundations that confirm it, which reflects the limitations of our awareness more than something else,and all that remains in this context is expressing great admiration for those who formulated and accomplished an influential dramatic plot based on these scientific and human data