Movie Review: Arrival
Rating: 2 Stars
I have two categories for science fiction films.
There are the sci-fi films that prioritize the fiction before the science. This is the go-to category for most Hollywood blockbusters. Most sci-fi movies you could describe as science fantasy. The prime examples being Star Wars, Independence Day, or Alien.
Then there are sci-fi films that strike more of a balance by making the science heavily impact the fiction. There have been great recent examples like The Martian or Interstellar.
Where Arrival misses the mark is that it struggles to find a home in either category. There’s a lot of science that drives a large part of the film and assumedly is the basis for the story, but the story goes so far into left field that all the science becomes trivial. To its own merit, Arrival takes chances as any good science fiction film should, but just because you take a big swing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get solid contact.
Cliche baseball analogies aside, the tone of Arrival felt inspired by Alfonso Cuaron’s magnum opus, Gravity. Gravity was a science fiction film solely involved with its fiction. Thus, the science elements were a background feature to aid in delivering an immersive story. The pacing was slow and the cinematography thoughtful.
Arrival borrows the slow pacing approach with many long wide panning shots to establish a sense of wonderment. The execution for a thought-provoking film came across in how the film was presented, but the story didn’t have enough legs to carry the weight.
Arrival stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks, a distinguished linguist professor. The film opens with a sequence establishing that Banks has a daughter that passed away at an early age with cancer. After a brief prologue, alien ships land all across the world sending the entire population of Earth into a rabid self-destructive frenzy.
Arrival is based on Ted Chiang’s short story, Story of Your Life. The plot and characters from the book are adapted on screen. The primary themes are the power of language and its contribution to the philosophy of determinism. Determinism is the idea that all events that occur are the result of previously existing causes rather than free will.
Director Denis Villeneuve has his hands full trying to juxtapose the arrival of aliens, the ensuing mass hysteria, and high concept ideologies all in one sitting.
The film approaches the alien arrival from two ways to its own detriment. There’s the macro view that the world is falling apart due to fear and conspiracy, and then there’s the singular focus on Banks’ character progression. The film only has time to explore one plot in depth leaving the other to not have any other purpose besides providing background and serving screen time.
The film hypes up Banks’ first encounter with the alien creatures which we learn are Heptapods. They have seven legs and a giant pod-shaped body. They basically look like giant floating squid with larger bodies and no distinct facial features. They communicate to Banks by shooting ink out of their legs and making circular signs on a glass wall that separates them from the humans.
Banks is tasked with figuring out the aliens’ purpose for coming to earth, and whether the military men get to start shooting rockets at them. Hilariously, as tensions build at other alien sites, the Chinese are the first to break and declare war on the aliens. Banks is close to a breakthrough, but the paranoid military personnel has had enough of Banks’ slow developing language experiments and decides to take matters into their own assault rifle laden hands.
Banks is flanked by a scientist, Ian Donnelly (a nerdy Jeremy Renner), as they work together to decipher the alien’s language and their purpose. The film’s dramatic hook is that Banks and Donnelly have to race against time to figure out what the aliens are up to and assure the military and world at large that they’re not here to destroy us. This premise works until we learn what the aliens came to bring us and that’s when the film transitions to the nonsensical.
I could be simple-minded here and I accept that criticism, but once you start playing around with time manipulation, you’re treading into murky waters very few plots emerge from without gaping holes. I felt disconnected from the story by the end. I had a grasp of what was transpiring, but I wasn’t sure of the message I was supposed to take away.
Arrival takes on two legacies since its release two years ago.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson posted a controversial tweet leading the Twitter machine and internet at large to do what it does.
The Academy was fond of Arrival as it was nominated in eight categories including Best Picture and Director. Arrival’s Oscar win came in Sound Editing. One other major historical nomination was in Cinematography where Bradford Young was the first African American to be nominated for the award. I would contend that while Arrival is well-done on a technical level (sound, editing, and cinematography), calling it the best directed or best picture of 2017 is a reach. Arrival was among nine films nominated for Best Picture.
Arrival was ambitious, but it was misplaced ambition that led to the film being watchable versus being memorable.
