A review by Josh Hughes
In contrast the mild winters of the last two years, Western currently finds itself in the midst of a much colder winter this year. If you need a place to hide out from the temperatures or some good entertainment, check out a series of blockbuster hits put on by AS Films. The first one, held on Tuesday, January 17 at 7 p.m. in Arntzen 100, is Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film “Arrival,” a science-fiction film that is more than meets the eye.
There’s a scene in the first third of the film in which protagonists Louise and Ian first see the aliens with whom they have to learn to communicate. From a peculiar box that brings to mind James Turrell’s otherworldly artwork, two shadowy figures emerge in a strange fog. Instead of relying on a cookie-cutter alien trope, Villeneuve created creatures that genuinely look like something from deep within another galaxy. The humans call them “heptapods” for the seven limbs they have, and they speak in a deep rumble and paint beautiful calligraphy. It’s one of the first cues that “Arrival” is not the blockbuster sci-fi film that its marketing suggested. Instead, it is an intelligent commentary on communication and language that merely uses aliens as a device to explore the way humans connect (or don’t connect) with each other.
Two-time Golden Globe winner Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist who, alongside physicist Ian Donnelly, played by Screen Actors Guild award winner Jeremy Renner, leads a team in attempting to understand why these aliens have landed on earth.
When twelve pods suddenly appear across the planet, Banks and Donnelly are stationed at the American pod in Montana, working under military enforcement led by Colonel Weber, played by Oscar, Emmy, BAFTA and Golden Globe winner Forest Whitaker. The story that then slowly unravels focuses on Louise and Ian as they attempt to bridge the language barrier between the species.
Since all twelve spacecraft appear in different parts of the world, each respective military and government must stay in contact with each other, presenting even more complicated challenges in communication and trust. When progress with one spacecraft is made, it must be shared with the rest of the world in order to solve the puzzle.
Beyond the big ideas that this movie presents, Arrival also doubles as an intricate character study of Banks, a lonely, middle-aged professional fascinated by the possibilities of human language. The film opens with a flashback to her life before first contact, and the audience comes to understand the sadness she carries with her on a daily basis. As the film goes on and she starts making advancements with the aliens, we begin to understand the glimmer in her eyes whenever she makes a breakthrough.
Instead of speaking or writing in a linear fashion, the heptapods understand language in something of a circular way, which mimics the rounded, ink splattered words/sentences/written forms that they communicate with. Without spoiling anything, this non-linear understanding of life as a whole takes the film into the canon of sci-fi stories that manipulate and question the concept of time, but Arrival doesn’t feel heavy-handed in its use of time-bending.
Throughout the film, Eric Heisserer’s screenplay thrives on subtlety, something that also seems outlandish for a stereotypical sci-fi flick. All the same, don’t let that make “Arrival” sound like a dull or boring movie for fans of films like “Interstellar” or “Gravity.” In fact, both those movies work as good reference points for just how exhilarating “Arrival” can be at its peak. Villeneuve certainly has the intent of making his viewers think about the film long after the credits roll, and this movie certainly covers enough big (yet nuanced) ideas for him to achieve that.
