“Are we not in this sense parts of a greater organism, kept alive through the ever more vividly circulating blood of an enormous past?” Biochemist Erwin Chargaff uses this analogy of circulating blood to describe the life-affirming virtue of memory. His proposition asserts that memory is not simply an element of a distant future. It pumps life into the present. Whether the choice of the analogy is deliberate is unknown; however, what stands out peculiarly is the invisible harmony between the shape and scope of biological and philosophical constructs. The Circle of Willis mirrors the circle of time, the doorway to memory. Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” (2016) emulates this topology and features it as its central enigma.

Arrival (2016) Movie Synopsis and Plot Summary:

Linguistic scholar Louise Banks is contacted by the US Army when an extraterrestrial spaceship is seen hovering too close to the surface of the Earth in Montana. Eleven...