Arrival

What's the title? Arrival

Who directed it? Denis Villeneuve

When was it released? 2016

What’s it rated? PG-13 for brief strong language

Would I recommend it? Yes. A thought-provoking sci-fi film, Arrival is not the most accessible film, but it’s not esoteric either. It requires more than purely passive viewing, but this is a movie that, with a little patience and some effort, yields abundant rewards for its viewers.

What's it about?(non-spoilers) “When twelve mysterious spacecraft appear around the world, linguistics professor Louise Banks is tasked with interpreting the language of the apparent alien visitors.” - iMDB

What did you think? (spoilers) Arrival has been on my radar for quite some time now. I missed it in theaters during its initial wide release. I missed it again months later when it finally screened at my local discount theater. When a viewing buddy of mine asked if there was anything at Redbox that I’d be interested in watching, I finally got my shot to watch the film I’d heard so much about.

Most of what I had heard was focused on the touching mother-daughter relationship in the film, so I assumed that Arrival was a family-focused tale dressed in sci-fi trappings. It’s not. Arrival falls firmly into the hard sci-fi genre. So much so that my viewing buddy – who had not heard the critical hubbub surrounding this film – spent the first two-thirds of the film on pins and needles, anxiously bracing for the Alien-type carnage to begin.

That carnage never comes. Which isn’t to say that the film is completely devoid of violence, but Arrival is not about body horror or jump scares. This isn’t even about humanity conquering foreign invaders. Arrival is a quiet film. The first half hour or so of the film moves at a glacially slow pace. I’ll admit that at one point I began to wonder if the whole film was going to feel like watching very beautiful paint dry, but thankfully the pace does quicken.

Over all I would liken Arrival to a placid lake – beautiful, serene, but also unnerving because you aren’t quite sure what lies in its depths. Is that ripple you see caused by a fish or a Stephen King monster lurking below? I will say that by the time Arrival allows its audience to see what is beneath the surface of the water, the reveal is in every way satisfactory. I suppose I could say that Arrival is a plot-twist kind of film, but that feels inaccurate. The “reveal” of the aliens intentions and of Louise’s relationship to the aliens and to her daughter feels less like a “gotcha” and more like the surprising but inevitable culmination of the film’s thematic thesis.

Arrival covers so much thematically - collaboration, the power of language, compassion, curiosity, understanding, love, death. All of these themes (yes, even death) are oftentimes seen as hokey and sentimentalized (quite likely because many of them are viewed as the provenance of women), and yet Arrival approaches them in a straightforward and respectful way. In that this was a film about global cooperation meeting a foreign invasion, Arrival reminded me as the more adult version of Pacific Rim. Both films gave me amazing world-building, stunning creature work, and competent film-making, but where Pacific Rim was all colors and loud noises and rock-em sock-em punch outs, Arrival was muted greys and long silences and thoughtful conversations. Both films left me with the warm and fuzzies. Which, as cold of a film as Arrival is, may be a surprising response, but it really shouldn’t be. Sci-fi often uses the Other, in this case aliens, to tell us, humans, about ourselves. And what Arrival says about us is hopeful and resilient, imperfect and painful but worthwhile.

Also, before I finish, I’d like to mention just how impressive the filmmaking is on Arrival - at every level. The directing, the adaptation of the screenplay, the cinematography – all of it was so well done. Jeremy Renner gives perhaps my favorite performance of his. I love, love, love, love, love his relationship with Louise and how it evolves over the course of the film. That relationship in particular felt so honest and mature in a way that I, at least, very rarely see much these days (who knows, maybe there are plenty out there and I’m just watching the wrong films). Speaking of Louise, Amy Adams is brilliant in the role. I know Adams is a several times over Academy nominee whose oeuvre includes some of the most critically-acclaimed films of the last decade, but every time I see her all I can think of is Giselle, so the weight of her work in Louise bowled me over.

This review didn’t go nearly as deeply into the film as it could, but there’s so much about the film that already, from the time I watched it, has settled back into the sediment beneath the water. This is a film that I’d like to watch several times over and just ruminate on. I imagine this is the kind of film I could return to over and over and always find something new.

Images: imdB

#movies #recommendations #readsreels