Arrival (2016)

You may have noticed that I have this tendency to compare compelling science fiction to Inception. In fact, in the case of Big Hero 6, Looper, and Transcendence, I usually draw a straight line back to 2010. This inclination, I admit, is somewhere between hagiography and tracking cultural influence, for few will deny that I am a disciple of Christopher Nolan and that the post-2010 science-fiction line-up does have a lot in common with Inception.

However, I’m not going to say that Arrival has much to do with Inception. (Nor am I going to spoil anything, promise.) Instead, I’m going to draw the connective tissue a little closer to the present, toward Nolan’s most recent film. Arrival is essentially a moody, Kubrickian Interstellar, without much in common with Inception beyond the same pleasant mental gymnastics as we follow along with the film’s very smart plot.

Amy Adams stars as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistic professor whose loose affiliation with the United States government puts her at the top of the list when twelve alien spacecraft arrive on earth. Drafted to help translate an alien language in order to understand the spacecrafts’ purpose on our planet, Dr. Banks works with a theoretical physicist (Jeremy Renner) and a wary colonel (Forest Whitaker) to piece together the mystery of the arrival.

Not just because both films utilize Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” to great effect (and affect), there are parts of Arrival that feel very much like Martin Scorsese’s underrated Shutter Island (perhaps not coincidentally, also 2010, a real important year for me as a filmgoer). Somewhere between Arrival’s fog-bound aesthetic and its depiction of resilient optimism in the face of a crumbling world, a belief that ultimately things will make sense if we study them hard enough, I was reminded of Shutter Island and its similarly determined worldview. In both films, we have a “detective” of sorts, whose dogged pursuit of a graspable truth – in whose existence very few of the other characters actually believe – plays out amid dreary weather and mournful violin solos which suggest the intangibility of truth and the inherent sorrow therein. However, in Arrival as in Shutter Island, the truth is out there, if only we had eyes to see it.

In Arrival, those eyes belong to Louise Banks, and thank heavens we have Amy Adams to play the part. In a just world, Adams would be in the running for Best Actress, because her portrayal of the linguist is stunning and powerful, conveying much with a frown or a furrowed brow, and her earnest desire to understand the aliens is something that comes through even as we see just how scared she is of the possibilities presented by life beyond our little blue world. We have all these other dudes in the film – and yes, Adams is pretty much the only woman in the film, which can’t be accidental – but they take a backseat to Adams’s performance.

For as small and intimate as the film’s focus is on Louise Banks, the film has a simultaneous grandeur to it that recalls Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The twelve alien ships, several stories high and hovering above the ground, recall Kubrick’s black monolith, suggesting perhaps shared common ground in both films’ treatment of mankind’s future and our place among the stars. There are moments in Arrival that feel a bit as though Stanley Kubrick is directing an adaptation of Wuthering Heights in which Heathcliff is an immense being at which we can only marvel, slack-jawed, while we attempt to comprehend. But where Brontë left Heathcliff somewhat inscrutable, where Kubrick might have left him to the dimension of the metaphorical, Arrival takes the occasion of immensity as a moment of contemplation. Louise begins in fear of the aliens, but track her evolution throughout the film.

Arrival isn’t a puzzle box like Inception, where we have to struggle mightily to keep up. Rather, it’s more akin to the scientific affect of Interstellar, in which mystery elements fit together thematically, not solely by virtue of their ability to clear up the plot. Rather than comprehend, we understand; we feel it. Arrival has a depth to it, a sense of truth and a very valuable point about geopolitics and the need for a utopian perspective. Louise Banks has that utopian vision, that belief that her work has purpose, direction, and possibility, where others see only futility and predetermination. It’s to the film’s credit that it convinces us to see things her way, and in a brilliant third-act reveal, teaches us how to do it, too.

Director Denis Villenueve – we at The Cinema King remember him fondly from Prisoners – is slated to direct the forthcoming Blade Runner 2049, and while I’ve never thought that film needed a sequel, seeing Villenueve at the helm of a compelling and grand science fiction film has me rethinking my tune.

Arrival is rated PG-13 for “brief strong language.” Directed by Denis Villenueve. Written by Eric Heisserer. Based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Tzi Ma.