Slow-burn sci-fi speaks to soul
There are a select few directors whose newest release fills you with great anticipation to see what they’ve come up with next – Denis Villeneuve is one such mastermind behind the camera.
The Canadian auteur has strangled our nerves, fried our brains and got our pulses racing with previous work as diverse as Prisoners, Enemy and my choice for last year’s finest film, Sicario.
With Arrival, the 49-year-old delivers his take on the alien invasion movie and – as you might expect – there are no global superstars like Will Smith punching aliens in the face or major cities being laid to waste here.
Arrival is more in keeping with the likes of 1997 sci-fi releases Gattaca and Contact – but superior to both.
The story follows Amy Adams’ linguist Dr Louise Banks as she is recruited by the military to translate communications being sent from mysterious alien spacecrafts that have touched down across the globe.
What follows in horror writer Eric Heisserer’s (Lights Out, Final Destination 5) screenplay adaptation of Ted Chiang short novella Story of Your Life is a slow burn exercise in paranoia, tension and wide-eyed wonder as Dr Banks and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) face a race against time to prove the alien visitors are no threat to the human race before military attacks are green-lit.
It’s nice to see Adams get the chance to sink her teeth into meaty material following on from her thankless role as Lois Lane in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The Italian-born actress is gathering Oscar buzz for her performance here and it’s not hard to see why as she imbues Louise with just about every emotion imaginable during a journey that ends with her being a very different woman from the calm doctor found at the film’s opening.
Renner is outshone by his co-star, but is never less than watchable, while Forest Whitaker’s Colonel Weber is a fully-fleshed character instead of the shouty, finger-over-the-button military type so often typical of the genre.
Villeneuve’s renowned eye for detail is evident throughout as he and his effects team refuse to glamorise the aliens or their simplistic-looking “shell” crafts.
The director makes use of fog and behindvisor camera shots to introduce the eerie “heptapods”, helped no end by another impressive score from Sicario’s Jóhann Jóhannsson.
As mentioned earlier, it’s a slow ride that some may lose patience with and some of the technical jargon flies way over your head.
But Arrival is a mature, surprising and touching slice of sci-fi drama that culminates in a fittingly poignant and moving conclusion.
Another triumph for Villeneuve, then, and now we only have a year to wait to see the director’s vision of Blade Runner 2049; that should get even Harrison Ford raising a smile.