Re: Arrival

Without getting into specifics, I wouldn’t say it’s her superiors who are trigger-happy, though there are definitely several others who are.  And it is indeed a very interesting movie.  I’ve put a hold on “Stories of your Life and Others” to see how it looks in Chiang’s original short story.

Sandra

From: Science Fiction and Fantasy Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dennis Fischer
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2016 10:19 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [SF-LIT] Arrival

ARRIVAL is one of those truly rare science fiction films that centers on ideas rather than action.  The film is full of mysteries which gradually get unveiled, so I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of it by giving too much away.  It is based on a short story of Ted Chiang and centers around the difficulty of humans communicating with a truly alien species. Director Denis Villeneuve (best known as the director of SICARIO) is on a mission of multiple objectives. Focused on the nuts and bolts of interspecies communication, this is an unusually intelligent object from Hollywood.,
ARRIVAL centers around a highly skilled professional woman  linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams),under the jurisdiction of dismissive, trigger-happy male superiors. She is recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to decipher the unintelligible blares of these beings from beyond who are hovering above Earth at 12 isolated locations across the globe, Louise has a helicopter meet-cute with her new copilot into the unknown, scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who champions science, not language, as the foundation of any society.  Together, the two travel to Montana to meet their elite team, manning computers in connected tents, a short distance from the ovoid spacecraft they’ll soon enter.
This is not a mainstream film--but on its own terms it works very well and it trusts the audience to put together some of the pieces so that once you acquire enough information, it all makes sense. (I have an abhorrence of mystery movies that never solve their mysteries, but fortunately this is not one of those).  There is a subtle pro-life message to the movie, and its major weakness is its score, which apart from a previously composed piece, is not very good. If you enjoy having your sense of wonder evoked and enjoy having ideas played with, then this is one you should enjoy.