Movie Reaction: Arrival

Formula: Contact / War of the Worlds

One thing that's fun about seeing so many movies in theaters is the trailers. There's a lot of different strategies for them. Some tell you the whole story because you need that to ever even consider the movie. Other times, the trailer is trying to sell a vibe by showing scenes that give you the rhythm of the movie, not the story. I've seen plenty that take the kitchen sink approach and throw everything at the audience but completely out of context. The ones I find most interesting are the ones that are holding back as much as they can, and it turns out that the trailer is only one flavor of the side. Arrival is in that vein.

Based on the trailers, there's not a lot to the movie. Amy Adams is a linguist called in by the government to decode an alien language when several vessels show up around the globe. That really is the whole story. She's a professor at a university. When the alien vessels show up, a colonel for the U.S. Army (Forest Whitaker) drafts her and a theoretical physicist (Jeremy Renner) to lead teams tasked with trying to figure out why the aliens are in Montana and 11 other places across the Earth. Adams slowly develops a way to communicate with them as tensions mount among the other nations. Everyone in the movie, of course, has seen Independence Day and knows what can go wrong. It's wonderfully tense stuff and they do a fine job convincing me that basic linguistics can be interesting.

There's more to it though and that's something the advertising has been closely guarding. It's not a twist, per se. It's more of a change in perspective. It reminded me of About Time of all things. That movie is sold as a time-traveling RomCom, which it largely is, but it's about more than that. You don't realize that the movie has actually been about something else the whole time until it's over. Arrival is very similar in that way. I know that the mere mention of the word "twist" is going to cause some people to start searching for clues. That's the wrong way to watch the film. It's not trying "trick" anyone. It's about how the story is told.

So, now that I've thoroughly confused everyone with a cryptic description of a story that I quite liked, let's move onto Amy Adams. She's great, right? That's kind of inarguable at this point. No surprise, she gives her role heft that it otherwise wouldn't've had. Whether you think the ending is really smart or a total cop-out is really determined by if you think she pulls it off or not (Personally, I think she does pull it off). Jeremy Renner is fine. He's Adams' confidant throughout and that's a key role. Whitaker is mostly going through the motions. I'm always happy to see him, but there's nothing about the role that needed an Oscar winner. Michael Stuhlbarg, as a stand-in for every government bureaucracy, fills his role nicely. It's Adams' movie though.

I like Director Denis Villeneuve. The movies I've seen of his (Sicario and Prisoners) are very visually distinct, as is the case with Arrival. It has moments that convey a large scope without ever getting as bombastic as something like Interstellar. The natural comparison is Contact. That's a more grounded movie (except for the parts that no one believes Jodie Forster went through). Arrival is happy to put the strange things right there with the normal and see how they coexist. We never understand the aliens, but they are right there to be looked at for much of the film. It's an interesting contrast.

I'm not sure that I loved Arrival. The movies it reminds me of are ones like About Time and Stranger Than Fiction, which I didn't expect. Those are films I had to watch several times to fully appreciate, which could be the case for Arrival as well (and it's excellent company to be in). Only time will tell. From my one viewing [so far], the emotional arc is all there. Some of the story mechanics, especially at the end, are a little jarring, and perhaps more cerebral than I was prepared for. Then there's Amy Adams, adding another entry into her argument as the best still-working actress without an Oscar.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend