'Arrival'
was a pleasant surprise hidden among so many dumb sci-fi action films
about aliens invading Earth that were made around the same time.
It's
nearly a hard sci-fi. There's very little action (and it mainly takes
place off screen), with the film focusing on the problems of
communicating with an alien race. Twelve ships appear hovering over
the Earth, each in a different seemingly random location. Each one
opens every 18 hours and the two aliens inside can be viewed and
interacted with.
I
like that we don't see the ship at first, just a long build up of
glimpsed news footage and finally her reaction to seeing it, from the
screens point of view. Obvious '2001' comparisons aside, the ship is
of a nice simple design, towering over the natural landscape. Once
they're in the ship a lot of shots are upside down (from the point of
view of the characters). Along with the droning ambient music this
creates creates a great feeling of unease. The suspense is built
before the final reveal of the aliens. I like their design, as
they're actually quite alien, but it's also rather understated in
keeping with the rest of the film.
I
didn't really care for her backstory all that much (as is often the
case with me) but the way that the “memories” of her daughter
were mixed in with related events in the present was nicely done. The
twist that many of what the audience took to be memories were in fact
the future was an excellent one, and I had only partially guessed it
(I was thinking the scientist guy was maybe the father and I thought
it would be time travel related as there was so much talk of the
aliens having such a different concept of time, but I was thought
maybe she would go back in time and save her daughter or something
that like - I much preferred the plot they went with, it was far
smarter).
There
were very strong themes of circular time, language, and working
together in this film, and they were brought to the forefront by the
simple yet often beautiful cinematography and washed out colours. The
plot was also fairly straight forward, but it plays out really
nicely, and I like that they didn't spell it out for the audience.
The character's emotions are very much on display, which I could give
or take, but at least it's not super Hollywoody where everything is
melodramatic and eye-roll inducing. I'd have been fine with a harder
sci-fi that focused even more on the alien tech and details about
their language and how the humans went about learning it (and more on
how each country reacted, maybe more detail about how the Chinese
communicated through Mah Jong - that sounded interesting).
Overall
a great sci-fi that's worthy of the name, with a solid concept, great
acting from the female lead, and engaging cinematography.
Arrival: 78.6