8. The TIME IS A CIRCLE/CYCLE Metaphor in Denis Villeneuve’s Film ‘Arrival’ (2016)

Corpus-based research in cinematic metaphors has hitherto been limited to the analyses of the filmic image and the use it makes of basic image schemas such as UP-DOWN, CONTAINER, SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, or primary metaphors such as GOOD IS UP and GOOD IS LIGHT. Recent research in this domain establishes the connection between abstract target domains and concrete source domains like camera movement, composition, sound, light, and colour to show the use of the metaphor within the frame. In this paper, we propose that Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Embodied Image Schemata can be applied to the narrative structure and design of a film as well, if the film employs the non-linear mode of storytelling. The film text at the centre of this study, Arrival (2016), directed by Denis Villeneuve, revolves around Louise, a linguist, whose perception of time itself changes when she learns the language of an alien species and is able to avert a global threat by reaching out to her future self. Through a breakdown of the film’s innovative and commercially successful narrative design (itself enabled by new industrial editing technology), coupled with an analysis of the resultant visual pattern and in-frame visual cues, we find a distinct connection between the image schema of a CIRCLE, the circular symbols (logograms) used in the written language of the aliens, their perception of time as circular/cyclic and the non-linear structure of the film text which loops back onto itself. The study shows how the basic image schema of the cycle or cyclic in the metaphor TIME IS A CIRCLE is concretised in the film’s design through a circular structural pattern in the narrative, thereby embedding the source domain to the abstract target domain of TIME. The insights gained from this analysis offer a persuasive and reproducible thematic approach to future experiments in non-linear narrative design in popular cinema.