Arrival (2016)

To be totally honest, I wasn’t expecting much from Denis Villeneuve‘s Arrival. Perhaps this was because I thought that Villeneuve‘s last film, Sicario, was hyped up a bit more than it deserved. Perhaps it was because I am not the biggest fan of Amy Adams‘s acting. Anyway, what I am trying to say is I did not think I was going to enjoy this film. I guess I was excited to see Jeremy Renner in a role other than Hawkeye. As far as marketing went, I think I had seen the trailer several months previous to watching the film and didn’t think much of it. I thought that this film would be a rehash of Independence Day or Alien, and the poster seemed to agree with that idea. I am a  fan of Forest Whitaker from his roles in The Last King of Scotland and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, but I assumed his role in this film would be just a typical military leader. Another one of my assumptions was that the film would be an event film over a moral message film or something more meaningful. The film has been nominated for eight Oscars: best picture, Director(Denis Villeneuve), adapted screenplay(Eric Heisserer), sound editing(Sylvain Bellemare), film editing(Joe Walker), original score(Jóhann Jóhannsson), production design(Patrice Vermette) and cinematography(Bradford Young). I could not believe that this film, in this genre, would be worth all of these nominations. With these prejudices, I jumped into the film.

When I was about halfway through the film, I almost gave up because I was bored. Most of my suspicions were correct. From the first second when Adams‘s narration came on I was disappointed. I am not a fan of narration in most cases because it is known to spoon feed the audience in the majority of cases. I originally thought that showing us the death of her daughter was just unnecessarily heavy and seemed just too dark. As well as this, the opening felt pointless. I really did not believe how Adams‘s character, Louise, got involved in the plot, Forest Whitaker‘s character, as expected, a stamp of a military suit meant to represent all military suits, just marches into her office and calls her up. However, and this is a giant however, this film’s twist absolutely blew my mind and basically wiped all past mistakes. It made every other plot point clear and useful to the plot. It expanded the mean of the film from ‘conflict’ to ‘time, family, planet and everything’. It was astonishing. This does not mean that the clunky dialogue went unnoticed, but it did make it a much better film than I had anticipated. How the story became suddenly nonlinear amazed me and how clearly it was done. The screenplay and the editing took typical film conventions(showing us the biggest point in a character’s life that makes them who they are) and our expectations(us assuming that it came before the events of the film) and subverts them(they actually occur after the events of the film). This made for an awesome narrative structure, it could start simple and reveal its complexity later seamlessly. This is contrasted to how Jackie of last year did it (review), where it tried to maintain a complex narrative structure throughout the entire plot to the point at where I was lost. Arrival‘s plot was well balanced and is presumably why it was nominated for best adapted screenplay this year.

As I said before, there were some instances of clunky dialogue in which it took me out of the story. One instance of this came when Louise(Amy Adams) was trying to convince Colonel Webber(Forest Whitaker) to allow her to work her way. It was not cleverly done. The screenwriter used a well-known anecdote of how kangaroos came to be named. It was barely relevant and made me roll my eyes, despite how they made Louise say, “it isn’t true”. I didn’t like it at all. Another aspect I wasn’t sure on was the character archetypes. You know? Default Colonel is Forest Whitaker, default CIA agent is Michael Stuhlbarg. It wasn’t anything new like the story structure was, but I think the point of these characters were to represent what the army and government would have done in a global crisis. If they were broad, deep and unique characters they would not have felt like they were representing their professions accurately enough. Or at least, we wouldn’t have guessed that they represented their areas of work. However, with this said, I think that characters that weren’t meant to represent a profession could have been expanded deeper. By the end of the film, I knew almost nothing about who Ian(Jeremy Renner) was as a person despite playing a large role in the plot point and being Louise’s best and closest ally. I cannot imagine a reason why a brief story about him could have been told other than screen time constraints. A short monologue would have gone a long way from a character that mostly exists in reaction to the protagonist. For an example, I look towards Nicole Kidman in Lion (Review). If a character merely reacts to a protagonist are they even a character? It becomes so obvious that they are just being used as a tool for handy exposition rather than a believable and entertaining character. Other than that, I think that I liked Amy Adams‘s Louise but maybe it’s because of how, because of our information, she changed over the course of the film. At first, she seemed a depressed single woman who’s child had died from an illness. When she is pulled into the military-alien operation she seems to have nothing to lose, taking off her hazmat suit, putting herself at risk, because she perceives herself as expendable? However, once we find out that she hasn’t lost her child yet, we realise she is just brave and selfless. That is a deep character. Much like, but also not like, Amy(Rosamund Pike) from Gone Girl: our perception of them change through the information the directors give us.

I would like to talk about the film’s many homages and whether it is a good thing or a negative thing. Firstly, the most obvious one to me was that of Alien. The suits (seen above) kind of hark back to the 1979 classic as well as the sci-fi subject matter. As well as this, the written language that the aliens use almost looks like Giger‘s Xenomorphs. I also noticed a slight bit of Jurrasic Park as far as the helicopter reveal of the spaceship and the fog hiding the true appearance of the aliens. As far as my opinions matter(which isn’t far) I think that these homages are in aid of this film’s image. My thoughts on this are the same as for the Netflix show Stranger Things, in the way that people like to be nostalgic and through reminding them of their favourite sci-fi films it gives a pleasant aura to the show and a nicer response from the audience – even if it is subconscious. However, if any audience members thought the references were too heavy or noticed them too often, they would become offended or think that it was thievery. This isn’t my train of thought on the matter but it is a very possible avenue for people to take when watching this film. Reference and homage are dangerous things to play with in this industry because it has a delicate balance, as Villeneuve changed the subject far enough from the reference films, I think it is safe to call it homage to initiate nostalgia. #Throwback. I think that there is enough original and thoughtful imagery in this film for future directors to use in their aid to make their own film’s identity in the genre. I really like the imagery of the ships, they have a unique, almost pebble-like, shape that will no doubt remain memorable.

Overall, I started wanted to dislike this film and I was patting myself on the back for the first hour of the film for guessing right, until the dramatic twist that made me eat my words. I wanted the film to fit into my review so I could sound very clever. However, this was not the case and I really liked the film. I appreciated the writing and filmmaking in general. I didn’t think the acting was anything stand out, but neither did the academy award nominations. I originally thought that the supporting characters were weak archetypes but then I thought about it and realised that their shallowness had power in the narrative and film’s message. I learned from this film that using filmic conventions and audience assumptions from those conventions is one of the most effective ways to make a twist; and a great film. This film is worthy of most of its nomination, perhaps not sound mixing as I struggled to hear dialogue clearly at times, but hey who cares? I would recommend this film to people who are fans of classic M. Night Shyamalan films. I don’t think this is one of my all-time favourite films ever but I do think it has taught me about narrative structure and my own assumptions about genre and marketing.