To See or Not to See: Arrival

Timely, hopeful, and thought-provoking are just a few words that easily describe the new science fiction movie, Arrival. Based on Ted Chiang‘s short story, “Story of Your Life”, Arrival is not your run-of-the-mill alien invasion film. It is a meditation on life and the choices we make.

Arrival begins with Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguistics professor. Her life raising–and losing–her daughter comes in snatched moments until we are suddenly left with a life-changing moment: aliens have come to Earth. Twelve giant alien vessels shaped like halves of an egg have landed in twelve different locations around the globe, including one in the middle of Montana. Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), from the United States government, recruits Louise to figure out the aliens’s language by visiting the vessel. Her partner in this expedition is another person the government has picked up: theoretical physicist Ian Connelly (Jeremy Renner). Together, they try to decipher the alien’s written language in order to discover the answer to their main question for the aliens, “What is your purpose on Earth?”.

In essence, Arrival is part alien invasion movie and part thinking piece. The alien invasion portion of the movie is what you would expect. There are tense moments of soldiers giving into their fear of these unknown creatures, eventually identified as heptapods (they walk on seven legs). Will there be a war between the heptapods and humans? Each country where a vessel has landed begins isolating themselves and hoarding the information they discover rather than working together. Communication breaks down.

Then, we have the big ideas part of the film. Learning another language fluently, Louise says, can rewire your brain. It informs how people think–with language comes understanding. Over the course of Arrival, Louise’s way of thinking becomes more shaped and transforms. Memories and images in her mind seem to become disjointed and fragmented as their non-linear sense of time becomes Louise’s way of seeing the world. Since heptapods see time as non-linear, they see the future, know what is to come, and, yet, do not let that influence the choices they make. The audience comes to this realization as Louise does–slowly and then, all in a rush. And that’s the most thrilling revelation.

Amy Adams carries Arrival with a quiet, steady strength. Her stillness while everything around her moves frenetically is simply fantastic to watch. The heptapods as portrayed in the film are wondrous creatures. Walking on long spindly legs, they survive in a foggy white haze behind some sort of glass. Their legs are like a combination of squid tentacles that spray black particles that act as ink when they write, expressive elephant trunks, and, funnily enough, E.T.’s long sinewy fingers. The visual effects team did a great job at creating creatures that are awe-inspiring and tug at your empathy.

Denis Villeneuve, the director, is known for some gritty yet smart and affecting recent films (like Sicario and Prisoners). With Arrival, he has turned what could have been a regular alien movie into a meditation on life and the choices we all make. The beauty in Arrival is a combination of so many ideas: how we must learn to communicate in order to understand, how words are much stronger than actions, the brilliance in compassion, and the strength of grief. May we all be a little like Louise: relentless, sure of herself, and, above all, ready to embrace what is in front of her.