At this point, there are too many movies about aliens
landing here on Earth to count. Everyone
has their favorites, I love the original Independence Day, because I don’t
think anything else has done it better.
In that movie, and several others, humanity is shown to be somewhat
united against the common enemy. With
Arrival, we finally have a movie that shows us as divided as we are now, and
what that division could mean should we be invaded.
First, let me start by saying this should not be confused with The Arrival, a much creepier alien invasion movie from 1996 starring Charlie Sheen.
Arrival starts by introducing us to Dr. Louise Banks. She’s giving a voice-over, stating that she
thought she knew the beginning of ‘your’ story and the end, but now she isn’t
sure. Over some well-assembled
flashbacks, we learn that the ‘your’ is a daughter she had who contracted a
rare disease as a teen, and died fairly young.
Dr. Banks is a linguist who is teaching at a college and living in a
beautiful home on a lake, a bit mopey because of (we assume) her daughter’s
death. Once day she arrives to teach and
finds the majority of her class missing – the rest soon are all distracted by their
mobile devices going off. She turns on
the TV to find that ships have arrived to earth from elsewhere, and have not
really landed, but are hovering at various points all over the globe. They are shaped like long oval eggs, but with
a flat side.
Dr. Banks gets a visit from Colonel Weber, who wants her to attempt
to translate a recording of the aliens.
Apparently she had done some translation for the government before so he
knew where and how to find her. She
states she would need to be there, face to face, and at first he’s reluctant,
but after checking in with what we assume is her main competitor – he comes to
pick her up at home in a helicopter.
En route, she meets Ian Donnelly, a theoretical mathematician. Together, they arrive at the military’s base
camp around the object in Montana. They
swiftly learn scientists at all twelve sites have been sharing what they have
learned in the hopes that they can all begin to communicate. The ships have a ‘door’ at the bottom that
opens every 18 hours allowing folks to walk in and interact with the aliens,
which up to this point, has been going nowhere.
Dr. Banks and Donnelly get their first look at the aliens,
which look a bit like the Scrabs from Abe’s Oddysee, if you remember that game,
but with more legs, and less of a head.
They give the aliens the name heptapods (they have seven
legs/arms). They stay behind a screen, apparently
the aliens breathe different air. Banks
starts using a white board to tell the aliens words and write them down, which
apparently no one had thought to do before, because the aliens respond by ‘writing’
a word on the screen between them. Their
language is circular based – and over the course of time (we’re not really told
how much), Banks and Donnelly are able to piece together their language and
work out a way to communicate.
The government, of course, wants to know why they are here,
and scientists hesitate to ask that, not wanting to scare or provoke the
heptapods. Unfortunately, not everyone
is on the same page, as the government in China begins to get more aggressive
about their visitors, suddenly there is a ticking clock on the project. Communications between the landing sites shut
down, so no one knows what the other groups are doing. At that point, Banks has to make a decision
about what they want, how they want it, and what to do – all hopefully fast
enough to avoid intergalactic and global conflict.
The movie is quiet and slow, any yet somehow manages to not feel
like it drags because it does a good job of intercutting Banks’s flashbacks
with her current progress. And yes, there is a bit of a twist at the end, that
some have found a little confusing, but I found to be an elegant conclusion to
the story. The alien design was absolutely lovely, and they seemed to be a sort
of space squid, since they communicate with ink. I’m not familiar with French-Canadian Director
Denis Villeneuve’s style, having not seen Sicario or Prisoners, but this one
was beautifully done. I did not care for
the score, since at some points I couldn’t tell if the aliens were speaking, or
if that was the score of the soundtrack.
They sounded a bit like whales when they were making noise, and the soundtrack
had a lot of that type of sound on it as well. The story was interesting, and actually fairly
simple when you get down to it, but it was well-crafted and well performed.
- Amy Adams is definitely the star of this movie, and she does a good job of carrying the majority of the plot. Her giant eyes work well in looking up at the heptapods with awe. The underlying sadness of the character was very interesting, especially once you get to the end.
- Jeremy Renner’s character is a bit of an afterthought, Ian Donnelly gets virtually no character development, aside from being great at math. He’s just fine, but honestly, doesn’t have enough to do to leave a lasting impression. My favorite thing for him was when Banks had him walk back and forth in front of the screen as she wrote “Ian walks” for the heptapods, as one of them walked with him. Charming.
- Michael Stuhlbarg plays Agent Halpern; the CIA scientist who was running the communication project prior to Banks showing up. He’s predictably shady.
- Forest Whitaker plays Colonel Weber, and he is basically the stereotypical military-dude in these types of movies. “I want to know why they’re here and I want to know now!” To be fair, he’s pretty patient with the scientists and helps them get what they need to communicate with the heptapods.
- Tzi Ma plays the Chinese General Shang. He’s key because he both provides the ticking clock on Banks figuring out why the aliens are here, and, ironically, he’s responsible for helping stop that clock.
Honestly, that’s about it, there are not a lot of people in
this movie. It’s a movie that manages to
simultaneously feel huge and intimately small.
Overall, it was a bit of a surprise for me. I was expecting it to be pretentious and
boring, and while it was definitely a bit pretentious here and there, I was at
no point bored – even though it does move slowly. I loved the reveal at the end, even if I didn’t
understand it completely, I thought it was a fantastic end to this story.
7 out of 10 – Bonus points for the hopefulness at the very
end, but lost points for humanity being divided and stubborn up to that point.
Cast Interviews:
Bonus - In case you forgot Abe's Oddysee:
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