High concept science fiction has found it’s way back to movies in the last few years with films like Interstellar, The Martian, and now Arrival. What I’ve always loved about the sci-fi genre is it’s ability to tell very normal human stories in different ways, by using situations and technologies that are otherworldly. Arrival tells a very intimate story about what would happen if an alien race just showed up and invited us into their ships for a good conversation.
That’s what this film is. It tells the story of a brilliant linguist who is brought in to try and communicate with this strange alien race. She along with a scientist, who wants to discover how they got here and what we could learn from their technologies. He quickly comes to understand how important understanding their language is and commits fully to helping decipher the strange symbols the aliens use to communicate.
The scenes of them trying to figure out a way to understand what brought the aliens to earth are intercut with scenes of a the linguist, Dr. Banks, and her daughter. These flashes of her life with her daughter clearly affect her emotionally and you begin to wonder whether she’s up to the job with which she’s been tasked.
The film moves a bit slowly, but you’re given just enough information to keep you wanting more. It keeps you on the edge of impatience throughout it without ever pushing it too far. Which exactly what a good suspense film should do. It’s that fine line between keeping you on the edge of your seat, and dragging it out so long that you relax again resign to the fact that you might never get your questions answered. Arrival skirts it perfectly and trust me the payoff is completely worth it.
I try to avoid spoilers with my reviews but this film neither caused me to break that rule, about putting in a little disclaimer when the spoilers would start, but it just didn't feel right, the simple fact that someone could ignore the warning and spoil the movie saddened me. The real meat of this film and what it means lies in the spoilers, but I went into it knowing very little about what I was getting into and was blown away the incredible payoff that the director, Denis Villeneuve presented to us. So this is one of my shortest reviews because there's just so little I can say about it without spoiling the ending.
This is easily my favorite film of the year and I will happily discuss it in more detail with anyone else who has seen it. So for this film I will simply encourage anyone who’s seen it to comment on this article and we’ll get all the spoilers out there. Or if you happen to see me in real life we can talk about it there too. This is a film that just cries out for further discussion and it carries as strong of a recommendation as I can give. It’s what science fiction should be all about.
Arrival 10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment