Why did Louise forget she had called the Chinese commander?
In the closing scenes of Arrival, we see events taking place long after the main timeline. There is a grand celebration where many of the key players are meeting.
Louise meets the Chinese General Shang who was, at one point, threatening to attack the aliens. He tells her that she called him on his personal number and this resulted in a rare event: he changed his mind. This was a crucial moment in stopping the movement to attack the aliens.
But Louise doesn't seem to remember the event or that she actually knew the number. Why not?
Best Answer
Because, by 'thinking' in the Alien language, Louise had begun to view reality from the Alien's perspective: and the Heptapods do not perceive time in a linear way. Louise was experiencing different moments in time concurrently.
This is almost-but-not-quite a bootstrap paradox, but it works because Louise's consciousness basically displaces itself into the future (this isn't completely accurate, but as a working example will suffice here). At that moment in the past, she was remembering her future, whilst experiencing it at the same time... she can experience all moments in her life simultaneously, meaning every moment is 'now'.
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What did Louise say in Chinese in Arrival?
The director opted to revel in the mystery. The writer wasn't as keen on keeping it a secret, and was happy to divulge. As he told the audience at Fantastic Fest, the line translates to: "In war there are no winners, only widows." "I worked so hard on the dialogue in Mandarin for Denis," Heisserer wrote on Reddit.What did Louise say to Shang in Arrival?
Louise tells Shang that his wife spoke to her in a dream and told her that \u201cwar doesn't make winners, only widows.\u201d Ian tells her that she can't stop what's happening. She responds by telling him that she just did. Word starts to come in over the comm lines that China is standing down.Why did Ian leave Louise in Arrival?
In a way, Ian felt blind-sided and couldn't forgive Louise for that. In his eyes, she acted selfishly by not giving him nor their daughter a choice. That's why her husband left her.Arrival - Dr. Louis calls Chang
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Answer 2
This apparently is just a plot hole. If people can not understand a film's logic, it does not necessarily mean that the film is too great, or the logic is too complex. In most cases it means that the film's logic is flawed, either because the writers were not smart enough to make it coherent, or sometimes it is contradictory by design to draw attention, provoke discussions, alternative interpretations and make it seem intricate, having hidden undertones.
One can foresee the future only if the future is completely immutable. If the future is mutable, then any events that follow the forecast may and most likely will change the future. In that case the forecast has absolutely no predictive value, since the real future will be completely different from the one that has been foreseen.
If the future is immutable, then there are only two options:
First option: people are completely deprived of free will, they can not choose neither their thoughts nor their actions. They are just compelled to think and to do only certain predetermined things, and they can only rationalize their thoughts and their actions and can only do it in one predetermined way. This view contradicts to everything that we know about ourselves.
Second option: people have free will and they can choose, but they always make one choice that at the moment seems the best for them based on the circumstances and the information that they have at the moment. In this case, if such a person starts foreseeing the future, he gets new information and he sees new options, and this changes the best choice for him. If you know that the plane is going to crash, your best choice is not to board that plane. And this would change the future, making it mutable, making it impossible to foresee.
Thus, one can not foresee the future, because by foreseeing it one would get a new information, and it would change his options, and that would change his choices, and that would change the future, so that what he had foreseen is never going to happen.
If we assume that there are two different timelines that exist in parallel, then for those timelines to arrive to the same future, they must proceed through exactly the same past, since the past triggers the future. That is, for Louise to have the conversation with the general in the future in both timelines, she had to call the general first in both of these timelines. And since she called in both timelines she must remember the call in both timelines, because that is how the memory works.
It is not a great film, it has some plot holes and a faulty logic, but you still can enjoy it if you suspend your disbelief.
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