Arrival Review

Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg

From the film's premiere, critics have been raving about Arrival. It's clear that Arrival will be a massive awards juggernaut.  Centering on Dr. Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, Arrival tells the story of first contact with aliens. When twelve extraterrestrial spacecrafts show up at random locations in the world, the US government sends Banks, a renowned linguist, to try and decipher their language and teach them English, trying to find out why they have arrived at our planet. At face value, this seems like a modern version of Contact, the Matthew McConaughey / Jodie Foster film that isn't held in very high regard. But Arrival examines many deep existential questions. Through Banks' interactions with the "heptapods", it asks the viewer what humanity is. How do we define our life? Do we accept the possibility that our way of life could be wrong? Why do we perceive life as a sequence of events rather than one life? These are not questions I expected to be asking myself in a science fiction movie. A warning: Arrival is a thinker. Some people will get lost, and that's no fault of their own. However, if you want a great theological experience, Arrival is your movie.

Most of the praise has found itself gravitating towards Amy Adams. She's one of the most consistent performers in Hollywood, and she does not disappoint here. I hesitate to call it her career best performance because American Hustle presents her with a meatier role, but she is excellent here nonetheless. She seems to be the only one concerned with leaning the heptapod's language, which leads into one of the movie's key themes: government ignorance. The army is concerned with why they're here, and that's it. They can't seem to wait for Dr. Banks to complete her study. The film presents a negative portrayal of the armed forces, but one that I suspect isn't too far from the truth if aliens showed up on our doorstep tomorrow. The confidence in not only herself, but the heptapods, makes her a very likeable protagonist. The other characters are really afterthoughts aside from Jeremy Renner's character, who is a very admirable second-in-command to Dr. Banks.

The main reason why I loved Arrival was for its deep messages. There are many religious undertones to the film. Twelve ships arrive, which prompts Christian groups to declare the Rapture underway. A key point in the plot reveals an algebraic formula that equals 1/12, and that is no coincidence. Parallels between the aliens and angels, and the stereotypes with them are made. If aliens descend they will bring chaos. If angels descend they will bring benevolence. The heptapods appear as Gods and are treated as such. Another key theme is what it means to be human. The heptapods experience time as one plane. They know the past, present, and future all at once. At one scene Dr. Banks explains that humans experience time in a sequential manner only because it is the only way we know how. We're not incapable of learning new things, we just naturally do what's normal. As humans communicate in long phrases with clauses (and let me tell you, English is the messiest language they could teach aliens) they reply with one continual symbol every time. Their sentences are one symbol, each one with tiny flecks of difference to indicate clauses, conjunctions, and the merging ideas. It's something so advanced, but Arrival's message is that it should not be that advanced. Why can't we do that? Why have we developed into a nation and world where we don't understand each other, and our most powerful tool and weapon- language, is rendered useless.

My only complaint with Arrival is that it gets a little carried away. There is a mind-blowing twist halfway through the film. I love a good twist, but this is the first one that I actually did not immediately understand. I had to ask to figure out what was happening. I fear this will happen to many people, and I think the makers of the film could have executed that pivotal scene to make it a little simpler to comprehend. The film also takes some leaps at explaining time. It's really stretching the possibilities I know to be true from my background, but I'm not an expert. If you really want a good movie, see Arrival. If you like juicy, head-scratching, message-heavy movies, see Arrival. It would be a massive snub if this did not get Oscar nominations across the board, and I even see it winning some.

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