‘Arrival’ plotline is not tidy
glamour. The film is tightly calibrated, but leaves things open to interpretation, for discussion on the ride home from the theater and beyond.
The trailers appear to give away too much of the movie, but there are still many surprises. (None will be revealed, or hinted at, here.) The set-up: Amy Adams portrays staid linguistics professor Louise Banks, who is recruited by the military to help establish a conversation with aliens. She teams with Ian Donnelly ( Jeremy Renner), an only marginally less sober mathematician.
“Arrival” is based on Ted Chiang’s short story, and the filmmakers were clearly interested in his ideas, not just the potential for box office-friendly spectacle. The linguistics challenge of communicating with beings whose language is an abstract mystery (well-explained in Eric Heisserer’s script), are as well-explored as the more sensational aspects of the story.
The unknown motivation of the visitors is a constant threat, and the
tenuous relations between countries increases the pressure to shortcut the scientific problemsolving. A mostly subliminal but important theme in the movie: Is our short-attention-span, instant-gratification culture making it impossible to execute planet-saving long-term thinking?
Adams and Renner are both excellent, acting throughout without visible makeup. In the middle stages, as stakes raise, the actors appear to have abandoned their wardrobe options entirely, and possibly started skipping showers between days on
the set. Forest Whitaker, who has made everything he’s in better since he was flown in for games at Ridgemont High in the 1980s, is a stressed-out colonel in charge of the military staging area.
But the revelation here is Villeneuve, who expands on the symphonic pacing showcased last year in the drug war drama “Sicario.” Even though the concept of “Arrival” is far-out fiction, Villeneuve treats it with no less detail or urgency.
The college campus scene where Banks learns about the alien landing — first with students getting
a flurry of texts in her class, and later with F-18s flying overhead — is particularly masterful. That, and the equally effective scenes preceding the first meeting with the aliens, develop with a tension-mounting leisure that seems almost audacious when compared to other movies of this kind.
A secondary plot related to Banks’ personal life provides huge emotional payoffs, which compensate for the lack of humor in “Arrival.” (Villenueve appears to have a life-threatening allergy to banter in his films.) Icelandic composer Johann
Johannnsson’s offers a spare and bleak musical score that sounds at time like someone playing a violin and oboe while being waterboarded. Those aspects, and some story points that remain open for discussion, will make the film tough to love for the wrap-it-all-up-witha-tidy-Spielberg-ending cinema crowd.
But these are refreshing
problems to have, at a time when Hollywood seems to be handing out plotline checklists to directors, then giving orders to crack the door open for at least two sequels, a prequel and a few spin-offs. “Arrival” leaves no such wiggle room. It’s as if the filmmakers knew it was pretty close to perfect already.