"Arrival" review

If only we put this much effort into understanding communication in real life.

Amy Adams plays professional linguist Louise banks, who attempts to overcome some sort of apparent personal tragedy in order to decipher the language of alien visitors and establish grounds for communication in a world gripped with enough fear to shoot first and ask questions later if she and her team aren’t quick enough.

This sort of plot as pitched to the mainstream for wide release by Hollywood typically presents the veneer of philosophical trappings to lace a manipulative race against time thriller driven by punctuated moments of action that take center stage regardless of the demands of the writing but in the case of “Arrival,” this is most definitely not so.

Akin to Gareth Edawards’ 2014 take on “Godzilla,” “Arrival” is an expensive looking movie with the clear backing of a Hollywood studio but the restraint and social insight of a man with indie sensibilities.

This could hurt director Denis Villeneuve’s perceived financial viability to the industry in the long term as “Arrival” may not quite appeal to the mainstream crowds the studio may be pushing for. However, his somber, realistic, and almost procedural take on the “alien first contact” concept is so fresh and daring that it solidifies him to me as an artistic melting pot of the best all areas of film have to offer.

The toned down and slow procedural aspect, achieved through a minimalistic musical score and a believably claustrophobic cinematography drawing emphasis to the few locations displayed through a muted color palette that controls the energy levels of the onscreen imagery, serves as the ultimate immersion tool for a monumental moment that comes off as genuinely awe-inspiring.

Adams and her fellow cast members, including Jeremy Renner as a quirky physicist willing to leave his comfort zone to face a new frontier of discovery and Forest Whitaker as a general hopeful for the best case scenario but always preparing for the worst, are brought face to face with a discovery that could catapult humanity into a new age and it’s impossible to not step into their shoes while it’s happening.

The monumental moments of first contact are followed from discovery to investigation and culminating in the early phases of communication and while very little happens across the first half beyond simply traveling to the alien crafts following the initial news reports, the understanding of the anxiety, wonder, restlessness, and excitement of it all unfolding and progressing makes it feel like a roller coaster bolstered by the excellently rounded performances.

“Arrival” isn’t just one of the more intelligent science fiction films of recent history but one of the most genuinely effective. Unfortunately, it may also be a bit too clever for its own good.

With a good 2/3 of the film covering the progress made with opening lines of proper dialogue with the aliens, the movie has to put all of this progress to good use with a third act that admirably thinks outside of the box but doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the movie thematically.

With Dr. Banks pressed to ensure that the aliens mean no ill intent before an increasingly suspicious human military strikes the first blow, the reasoning behind their arrival is finally revealed in the form of a major twist and although it doesn’t quite betray the mechanics of its setting like the similarly ambitious but profoundly flawed “Interstellar,” it still doesn’t quite sit well with the rest of the story.

Parts of it undermine the central themes of scrutinizing our willingness to assume the worst and the necessity of opening up to new frontiers. Others, meanwhile, fail to answer the core question of what happens when we discover we aren’t alone in the universe to begin with.

The movie comes together with a wrap up built atop these new revelations that are just too undeniably faulty and as the credits rolled, all I could think of was how the third act almost knocked “Arrival” down from being a great film to  just a good one.

That’s to say nothing of Villeneuve’s direction of actors, which more often than not effectively leave the impression of having very three dimensional hidden depths but can occasionally dip into awkward straw man territory that fails to even serve the purpose of the straw man fallacy in story.

I say almost because for every flaw of that final act, I found more and more redeeming aspects regarding certain questions of sci-fi mechanics that even the best of films executing this sort of twist aren’t bold enough to tackle directly; Moments that wrap the movie back around into being a beautifully yet painfully imperfect masterpiece.

“Arrival” is a film inviting to everybody with piqued curiosity but not suited to the sensibilities of everyone that it will attract. It accepts this and boldly pushes onward with a confidence most films made on low budgets with low risk factors even dare to carry.

At worst, it’s an ultimately messy but well intentioned, well crafted and ambitious bit of filmmaking and at best, it’s easily one of the best films of 2016 by far, even if it doesn’t quite hit the heights that its first half may have projected it to reach.

8 Extraterrestrial vacancy signs out of 10