'Arrival' is the kind of movie we need more of

They're trying to figure out if it's a cookbook

It's pretty amazing that Arrival got made.

Arrival is a patient, cerebral, action-light, hard sci-fi drama. It's not based on a popular (comic) book, a video game, a toy, or any other of the pre-branded properties so in vogue in Hollywood these days, but on a patient, cerebral, action-light, hard sci-fi short story called "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. It's helmed by an accomplished but relatively obscure director (Denis Villeneuve, of Prisoners, Sicario, and, next-up, Blade Runner 2049, a 2017 Blade Runner sequel returning Harrison Ford). It has a production budget of about $50 million, chump change by modern Hollywood major studio standards. It stars three great actors (Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker), none of whom, however, is known to be a reliable box-office draw. All this, and it somehow got a semi-wide theatrical release from Paramount Pictures, a major Hollywood studio.

And thank goodness it did. 

Arrival is about the sudden appearance on Earth of 12 gigantic, monolithic extraterrestrial craft, and Earth's attempts to figure out why they are here. The action focuses on America's efforts, spearheaded by linguist Luise Banks (Adams), theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Renner), and overseen by Colonel Weber (Whitaker). The aliens do not appear to be hostile. But Banks' team has to face a different enemy: the language barrier. It's hard enough to communicate with a human being when neither of you knows the other's language. Imagine trying to establish communication with another intelligent species, one that, it turns out, thinks in an entirely different way from you.

Especially when it could be a cookbook?

As I've said, it's a heady premise. But Arrival does great work with it. Unlike a large portion of alien-based sci-fi, there is no real horror. The dominating sentiments are, instead, mostly awe and mystery, as Banks' team goes to work trying to knock down the biggest language barrier in history. Adams' subtle portrayal of Banks gives her a confident intelligence, underscored by an emotional vulnerability that makes her character more than some kind of unflappable genius wunderkind. Her interplay and rapport with Renner's wise-cracking physicist excel as the movie's central relationship, driving the plot and intensifying credibly as the narrative advances.

Other aspects of Arrival elevate it above typical genre fare. Villeneuve belongs to that dying race of director capable of letting the camera linger and of framing a shot. The fact that camera tricks and filming choices keep the aliens themselves mostly hidden throughout the movie suggests this may have been partly for budgetary reasons, but we don't get a full shot of the half-football shaped alien ships until almost 20-30 minutes into the movie. And the payoff is worth it: The first craft we see is suspended just above a green plain, lightly draped with fog, and set against a bare sky. It's a memorable shot, one that also serves as an audacious audition for a place in the annals of iconic sci-fi imagery. Other scenes also supply worthy submissions: a hardly-novel but still-impressive playing with gravity and perspective, for example.    

The first real glimpse of  an alien ship in Arrival

I think it compares well to this iconic shot from 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example

The movie also dabbles in other thoughtful ideas, most of them proceeding from its central theme of communication: its difficulty, its breakdown, its meaning, its purpose. Some of this, unfortunately, gets swept up in a narrative that would have been content to linger for much longer than the movie we got, and some of it is made too explicit in scenes of over-exposition.

But the main flaw of Arrival, if there is one, comes from how much of the narrative is subsumed by an admittedly clever twist that comes at the end (and whose nature I shan't reveal here). Maybe I'm just too genre-savvy. But I was hoping that the movie was going somewhere other than where it went, even when I began to get a (correct) sense of its ultimate direction before the dramatic reveal. The journey to that place is still enjoyable, though--and probably even more so upon a second viewing--even if the destination left me a bit dissatisfied.    

So, yes, Arrival isn't perfect. But it's pretty good. I'd give it a positive review even if I weren't biased in favor of not only this type of movie, but also of seeing as many of this type of movie (the 2001: A  Space Odyssey, Interstellar, 10 Cloverfield Lane genre) in theaters as possible. In an age when studios and audiences alike seem to demand pre-branded, thought-lite properties, Arrival is an incredible gift, and I'm grateful for it. And if you take my advice and see it yourself, I think you'll be grateful as well.