Reflections on the Movie 'Arrival'
More Thoughts on Christian Time Travel
Groundhog Day weekend seems as good a time as any to offer some eight-years-belated reflections on the 2016 movie Arrival. Though in keeping with the theme of the movie, is a review eight years later necessarily “belated” at all? and isn’t any day as good a time as any?
(I can’t think of any way to discuss the most interesting and important elements of the movie without spoilers; so, Spoiler Alert, there are spoilers ahead—really the following is full of spoilers, even almost nothing but spoilers. And arguably the preceding paragraph has already spoiled the surprise middle. But I would encourage you to feel free both to watch the movie and to read this piece, in either order—again, in keeping with the theme, I would encourage you then to answer for yourself: In what ways did it matter or not matter, what order you did them in, if in the end you did them?)
(A difference of opinion, or practice, as to the purpose or use of movie reviews: Some think you read them before watching the movie, maybe to decide whether even to watch the movie; I tend to prefer to read reviews after watching the movie, to explore more deeply what others thought—about the movie, and about the movie makers’ thoughts—and what I think. If the former, here’s my short take, my recommendation:
Yes, in my opinion: You should watch this movie.
If that’s your lens for conceptualizing or categorizing movie reviews, or if you think it might be, feel free to stop there, go watch the whole movie, and come back afterward for further discussion here.)
Perhaps my favorite para-genre of popular culture—songs, TV shows, movies—is ones that aren’t told by or from a Christian point of view, but nevertheless tell (or, better, show) deep Christian insights and truths, about the world and about ourselves. Many secular popular songs poignantly describe the profound emptiness and loneliness of our modern life without God—how inadequate any amount of sex, drugs and alcohol, or wealth and fame is, to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts—and yearn for something more: (warning for language, and content) “The Fear”, “Blank Space”, “Habits”, “Bad Habits”, “Sober Up”, “Karma”—some darker than others, some less ultimately despairing than others, some examples more arguable than others: but one could think of many, many examples to argue about.
TV shows like Bojack Horseman and Crazy Ex-girlfriend, while more and less comedies (and definitely not by or for Christians), offer really dark reflections on the fallenness of man: in which the main characters treat even those closest to them very badly, then have a perspective so distorted by the self-serving stories we tell ourselves, that they tell themselves they haven’t even done anything wrong.
Arrival is a different kind of example. If it embodies Christian insights, they’re ones about acceptance—accepting the hand we are dealt or the life we are given, the blessings and the hardships; accepting that others are people, too, their own individuals with their own choices, that we can’t change them or make them do anything; choosing love even when others won’t—yes, even specifically about marriage: When the Bible has occasion to consider the question, St. Paul says, If you’re Christian and you end up married to a non-Christian, don’t leave your spouse; but if he leaves you, let him go.
You can’t force him to stay.
“. . . God has called us to peace.”
So much harder, and so much more poignant, given that this—your husband or wife leaving you—is actually the context in which we are so exhorted.
Or perhaps—though not unrelatedly—the Christian insights that Arrival contains are a little more abstract—“that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real”, that our life is what it is; perhaps even (who can say?) that “We do only what we are meant to do.”
Christianity is not Buddhism. But we are called to peace, and a lot of acceptance; and peace comes, in large part, through acceptance.
Screwtape observes, “Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy’s will. What the Enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him . . . .” Here, even at what might be a point of greatest resemblance between Christianity and Buddhism, comes perhaps one of their deepest differences: Christianity does not deny the reality of our lives, but affirms it. We reach peace and acceptance not by believing that it is not real or does not matter, but by, as the linguist/Louise says, “embracing” it: This really is our life, for better and for worse.
In this way, the perspective of the movie’s conclusion, while not specifically Christian, is like that of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: positive, humanistic, fundamentally optimistic that the blessings of life and human relationship are worth the pain and sorrow that, going along with them, are not only a necessary risk, but even a necessary reality.
Or as C. S. Lewis puts it in a different place, in The Four Loves (chapter 5, “Charity”):
“In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him (Confessions IV, 10). Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.
“. . . And there is no man alive who responds more naturally than I to such canny maxims. I am a safety-first creature. Of all the arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘Careful! This might lead you to suffering.’
“To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less. . . .
“. . . We follow One who wept over Jerusalem and at the grave of Lazarus, and, loving all, yet had one disciple whom, in a special sense, he ‘loved.’ St. Paul has a higher authority with us than St. Augustine—St. Paul who shows no sign that he would not have suffered like a man, and no feeling that he ought not so to have suffered, if Epaphroditus had died (Phil. II, 27).
“Even if it were granted that insurances against heartbreak were our highest wisdom, does God Himself offer them? Apparently not. Christ comes at last to say ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’
“There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”