Review: Arrival

If you saw your whole life flash before you, would you avoid suffering if it meant having to give up something you love? Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s, captivating 2016 Sci-Fi/Drama. Seems like a movie about aliens on the surface, but it’s so much more. 

The film opens on a scene between a mother and her newborn daughter. Amy Adams plays mom, expert linguist and professor, Louise Banks. The story moves along so quickly at the start, it’s difficult to process the tragedy unfolding as we witness her daughter’s early years, her cancer diagnosis, and untimely death. Louise’s narration in the first scenes sets up the rest of the story: “I don’t think I believe in beginnings and endings anymore.”

Louise almost lifeless existence after her daughter’s death is suddenly interrupted when she is recruited by the government to help decipher an extraterrestrial language after an alien aircraft arrives on earth. The American team of experts that has been assembled to find out why nine space crafts that have landed all over the world are lead by Louise and Theoretical Physicist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). The teams are working in conjunction with nine other nations that are trying to toe the line between peaceful discourse and protecting their respective nations, and ultimately humankind. 

The space craft opens twice daily and a small team including Louise and Ian are given access to communicate with the aliens, or Heptapods, as they’re later called. In these "sessions" the humans and the aliens attempt to communicate through a glass wall in the space craft. 

As their interactions develop, Louise tries desperately to help the rest of her team understand how vital it is to begin with the basics of language when communicating with the Heptapods - emphasizing how many different ways communication can go awry, and has in fact caused whole civilizations to collapse. 

Louise successfully communicates with the Heptapods when they draw symbols on the glass wall and slowly Louise and her team are able to put together the purpose behind Heptabpod’s arrival. Once Louise and Ian are able to "crack the code" of the Heptapods language, tensions run high as each nation interprets the Heptapods message in varying ways, and it isn't until near the end of the film when Lousie is granted a private audience with one of the Heptapods, that the story comes together.

The last half and hour of the film really ramps up as Louise (through a special otherworldly connection with the Heptapods) starts to straddle the past, present, and future in a way that makes for one of the most unique storytelling devices I've ever seen. As we begin to learn more about the Heptapods and their purpose on Earth we begin to see that it's only through the cooperation of all of the nations that humanity can be saved.

This movie is about understanding the multi-faceted nature of language - how it can be a weapon and a tool - and why that is important to the thriving of humanity. This movie is about the concept of time and its ability to limit people. There’s so much more to grasp -it’s beautifully complex, but it’s definitely not just a movie about aliens.

The cinematography is dreamy and the setting (the plains of Montana) is a beautiful backdrop for a film with such depth of meaning. Villeneuve uses fog is used to conceal things and reveal them slowly. Similarly, the narrative is measured, but the film earns its slow pace because it is expertly executed with an outstanding adapted screenplay and standout performances from Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. 

I’m not a particularly huge fan of sci-fi, but this movie moved me to tears. The story is refreshing and necessary. It will certainly be at the top of my favorite films list for many years to come.