(USA, 116 min.)
Dir. Denis Villeneuve, Writ. Eric Heisserer
Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker
Programme: Galas (Canadian Premiere)
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| Courtesy of TIFF |
One must hand it to Denis Villeneuve. The best Canadian
director working in the movies today hasn’t lost his touch since moving away
from his home and native land. Arrival
marks Villeneuve’s third Hollywood film after Prisoners and the superior Sicario,
and it’s both his biggest and best work since grabbing international attention
with Canada’s Oscar nominee Incendies.
The unique voice that Villeneuve developed in his Canadian work, however,
infiltrates every frame of Arrival as
the film evokes the visual power, emotional rawness, and speculative thrill of
his previous works. Arrival has
echoes of Enemy in the octopussy
aliens that recall the spindly web of this 2013 mind-game and there are even
shades of his gothic buffet Next Floor
in the dark allegorical layers of this far-out world. Working on his biggest
canvas yet, Villeneuve stretches his talents to their full potential: It’s the
best mainstream film so far this year.
Arrival adapts Ted Chang’s short story The Story of Your Life as linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) makes contact with aliens loitering ominously around the planet. She receives the assignment from the military’s Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to make the tricky feat of interpreting extraterrestrial language with the aid of theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). Their progress, while shrouded in secrecy, advances swiftly as the aliens babble from behind glass walls. In search of a common language, Louise breaks down the fundamentals of speech and communication. Using a highly meme-able whiteboard and the building blocks of language, she makes contact.
Villeneuve crafts an eye-opening speculative atmosphere that
takes place in the near future but finds its power in the action’s resemblance
to today. The production design by frequent Villeneuve film teammate Patrice
Vermette uses only the sparsest elements to create an alien invasion, while the
snippets of extraterrestrial life that do appear in Arrival are bracingly impressionistic and the moody cinematography
by Bradford Young accentuates the minimalist production design. A pulsating
score by Sicario MVP Jóhann
Jóhannsson fuels Arrival with a
euphoric rush of adrenaline.
Arrival is
singular sci-fi and smarter than the average studio film as it rejects
spectacle in favour of philosophy. The film examines the elements of connection
and communication that are forgotten in the digital age as Louise relies on old
school methods and true, legitimate face to face dialogue to establish trust
and build relationships. It’s a surprisingly analogue science fiction film as
few digital conveniences drive the story, aside from a nifty tablet app that’s
merely a practical manifestation of the groundwork Louise lays. As Louise
communicates with the aliens and learns their language, she articulates a new
perspective of life on Earth as the syntax and structure of extraterrestrial phonology
exposes the limits of human expression.
Adams, who’s having a great year at the Festival with Nocturnal Animals, gives a performance
of unwavering passion and strength as Louise. The star isn’t afraid to show the
fear that screams in the linguist’s eyes as she enters the belly of the alien
ship for the first time. Louise is, after all, human and fear is a basic
emotion of our species. The adrenaline rush of confronting the alien species
only fuels her quest for knowledge, though, and Louise becomes a quiet leader
as she outsmarts every man in the department by relating to the aliens on a
human level, using her eyes, hands, face, and every aspect of her being to
break down barriers in communication, regardless of protocol.
Louise also suffers from a profound sense of loss as Arrival begins with a chapter from
Louise’s life that defines her story. Following the tragic loss of her
daughter, Louise needs to believe that something exists beyond the terrain of
the Earth. These aliens offer some hope of an afterlife as all this expansive
space houses the unknown. Memories of her daughter appear fleetingly as Arrival deftly begins to reconfigure its
chronology to favour a non-liner syntax to match the alien language. The film
evokes the memory of Robert Zemeckis’s Contact
with Louise offering a kindred spirit to Jodie Foster’s pragmatic Ellie Arroway
as she searches the galaxy for lost stars from her life.
Arrival, however,
benefits from the limitations that Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer
put on the alien elements. They instead keep nearly all of the action grounded
on Earth and find that the greater potential comes from withholding things from
view. The marvel of science fiction is the power of the unknown, and Arrival keeps the audience guessing
until its final moments until everything comes full circle. Arrival is a profound meditation on what
it means to be human.
Arrival opens in
theatres November 10.
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