Director: Dennis Villeneuve
Writers: Eric Heisserer (Screenplay), Ted Chiang (based on a short story by)
Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Michael Stuhlbarg, Forest Whitaker, Sangita Patel
Genre: Science Fiction
Arrival is the perfect answer to the disastrous state of blockbusters in 2016. It’s science fiction, but it’s smart science fiction. It’s science fiction that posits a future in which being intelligent and empathetic are the most important character traits one could have. It’s an all out rejection of the typical first contact narrative, and its subversion is one of its most significant strengths.
In Arrival, director Dennis Villeneuve and writer Eric Heisserer, along with an incredible cast, weave an intricate story entirely from the perspective of a linguist – Louise, played by Amy Adams. Her sole purpose is to learn how to communicate with the Heptapods (those are what the aliens are called, by the way). That’s the crux of the film – the two races trying to communicate with one another. Baseless assumptions are tossed out (at least by the main characters) in favor of open-mindedness.
Right now, it’s an incredibly important film – a reminder that equating “different” and “bad” is a strategy unlikely to accomplish very much of anything. Further hammering this point home is that Arrival doesn’t have a villain, at least not in the conventional sense. Sure, there are conflicts in the film. But even the characters that take morally reprehensible actions aren’t portrayed as bad people – that’s very much left up to the viewer.
All of this is a breath of fresh air, especially the lack of on screen violence. We never see it, because it’s never important. The restraint that must have taken is astonishing – a big budget sci-fi movie with no action sequences? When was the last time that happened? And man, it’s so nice to not see people killing one another on screen in a sci-fi movie. Or any movie, really.
Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner really sell the film’s ethos. Their on screen chemistry is excellent. More importantly, they both capture human emotions incredibly well. It illustrates a range I didn’t even know Renner had, and this is easily his best performance to date. I expect that I would be saying the same of Amy Adams had I not seen Nocturnal Animals earlier this week.
Plot wise, Arrival does expect the viewer to just roll with a bunch of its plot points. It doesn’t really bother to explain how certain elements of the film work. And it’s better for it. I don’t care about the minutiae of the universe, because ultimately that’s not the point. Similarly to the violence, it takes a lot of restraint to not over explain plot points. That’s a lot of trust to place in the audience, and some may not enjoy it for exactly that reason.
The result is a script that feels super sleek. There’s nearly zero dead weight to it, and nearly every single line feels like it carries weight. That even applies to the monologues, which in theory should feel like dead air. But they don’t – instead, they feel impactful and relevant.
If you couldn’t tell, I really loved Arrival. It’s a sci-fi film that is entirely built around its message, and it isn’t even a conventional one. While the setup is familiar, the direction the film takes is anything but. Absolutely stellar.
