|
 (113016)
Arrival is the latest in a long line of “first contact” sci-fi stories, and yet
regardless of its familiar premise, its achievements are unique. Striking a
delicate balance between dread and hope, Denis Villeneuve’s majestic and
magnificent genre work is fundamentally concerned with
communication—specifically, humanity’s attempts to strike up a conversation with
extraterrestrials who don’t even comprehend the basics behind our native tongues
(and vice versa), much less speak them. It’s an out-there saga that, at heart,
is fascinated by the intricacies of verbal and written language, and how it
binds us to the past and the future in ways both heartbreaking and inspiring.
It’s a film about forging a link with great, unknowable others, all so that we
might truly understand ourselves.
Don’t worry, though—despite such lofty intentions, Villeneuve’s film is anything
but a slog. On the contrary, led by Amy Adams (2013's
Man of Steel) in a performance that, like the
material itself, is perched on the precipice between despair and ecstasy,
Arrival (based on Ted Chiang’s acclaimed short story “Story of Your Life”) is a
thrilling work of science fiction, one that conflates individual and universal
concerns via a methodical examination of mankind’s response to the arrival of
interstellar beings. Those visitors show up in twelve oblong, stone-grey ships
that take up residence at random points around the globe, hovering just above
the ground, and their appearance incites both awe and terror in Earth’s
population. For famed linguist and professor Dr. Louise Banks (Adams), however,
their emergence is the beginning of a journey whose end will be yet another
beginning—a circular pattern of life and death that’s foreshadowed by a preface
depicting cherished moments from Brooks’ time with her daughter Hannah, who at
an early age succumbed to a rare, fatal illness.
Recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker, 2006's
The Last King Of Scotland ) and paired with
mathematician-scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner 2012's
The Avengers), Banks quickly finds herself in
Montana, where an alien ship is located above a rolling green meadow surrounded
by mountains over which—in one of numerous, gorgeous compositions—the fog
cascades in menacing waves. Despite American efforts to coordinate intel with
other nations (many of which are contending with their own UFOs), little is
known about these space travelers, and so Banks and Donnelly are raised up by a
mechanical lift into the craft through a small portal (which opens for a period
of time every few hours), where they learn that gravity isn’t quite what they
expected inside—and that the extraterrestrials waiting for them are anything but
human.
To spoil exactly what Banks and Donnelly discover in the ship’s mysterious
chambers would be downright criminal, given how expertly Arrival withholds key
information in order to stoke anticipation for its every successive (visual and
narrative) reveal. Nonetheless, Villeneuve’s handling of this early going is
masterful, and on the heels of his 2013's "Prisoners," 2014's "Enemy," 2015's "Sicario,"-and in advance of
his coming
Blade Runner
2049 sequel, which suddenly seems right in his wheelhouse. The
director’s latest establishes him as mainstream cinema’s finest employer of the
widescreen frame. Villeneuve is an artist so assured in his visual framing and
staging that most of his material’s sense of menace, and import, comes from the
way in which he (alongside ace A Most Violent Year and Selma cinematographer
Bradford Young) contrasts light and dark, studied and unsteady camera movements,
and eerie quiet and foreboding sonic blaring (courtesy of Sicario composer
Jóhann Jóhannsson’s unsettling score).
Never is that more acute than in Banks and Donnelly’s maiden foray into the
spacecraft, where they find themselves in a long, dark, down-is-up corridor
illuminated only by the bright, foggy light emanating from a room at its far
end. Villeneuve’s grand imagery and measured pacing infuse the action with equal
parts curiosity, trepidation and excitement. And yet he then repeatedly, and
skillfully, juxtaposes that tantalizing tone with a lyrical, emotionally shaky
atmosphere in subsequent sequences which, aesthetically as well as thematically,
recall Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life—be they flashbacks to Banks’ memorable
times with her daughter, or solitary shots of her walking in wide-open plains,
the camera echoing her uncertainty and fear in its bobbing, trembling motions.
Throughout, Adams beautifully embodies Arrival’s push-pulls between wonder and
alarm, longing and contentment, joy and anguish. Tasked with developing a means
of interacting with the aliens before other nations—namely, China and
Russia—resort to knee-jerk warmongering, Adams’ Banks exudes a staunch toughness
underscored by fragility. Her eyes radiate steely resolve even as her hand, when
putting on a Hazmat suit, momentarily trembles, and her quest to find a common
interspecies dialect is carried out with an intellectual inquisitiveness—“What
is your purpose on Earth?”—that reflects her belief in language as the primary
building block of all human life. It’s a star turn of both strength and
vulnerability, and even during the material’s hair-raising centerpiece meeting
between Banks and the visitors, Adams grounds the out-there action in piercingly
relatable euphoria and grief.
Of course, whether between species or nations, creating a constructive way to
engage with foreigners turns out to be a tricky undertaking. As its plot’s
tensions begin to boil—thanks to possible misinterpretations of the creatures’
pronouncements—Arrival eschews on-the-nose preachiness for a more general study
of the vital need for patience, and persistence, on the part of strangers who
don’t initially understand each other. That’s especially true for Banks and
Donnelly, given that the aliens’ notes come in the form of [minor spoiler alert]
bio-sprayed patterns that convey moods more than explicit letters or sentences.
Their ability to decipher those designs requires something of an audience
leap-of-faith (i.e., the explanations sound better than they probably are), but
the underlying idea proffered by the story—that communion is only possible
through communication—provides it with powerful poignancy.
The circular shape of the aliens’ messages eventually proves most crucial to
Villeneuve’s drama, as it speaks to language’s role in tethering us to our past,
present and still-to-come experiences. That notion is also expressed by the name
of Banks’ deceased child, “Hannah,” a palindrome split evenly between an
identical beginning and end. I’d be lying if I claimed to be unaffected by the
part played by “Hannah” in the tale’s eventual revelations. Yet in a certain
sense, that personal art-life connection feels ideally in tune with Arrival, a
film that, for all its majestic otherworldly sights, is ultimately about how
words and images shape, reveal and remind us of who we are, where we’ve been,
and where—as people, as societies, and as a race—we’re headed. |
