Maybe If We Play It Backwards

Conditions: Huh? 

Film Review: The Arrival

Most alien earth attack movies follow a predictable pattern.  Perhaps a forboding or two, then suddenly ships are hanging over cities, military types are suitably concerned, the President is officially rumpled, and it's generally on for young and old.  What's perhaps most interesting about Arrival is that deep down, really deep down, it is still an alien earth attack movie.  The difference is really in the type of weapon the aliens in Arrival have brought.  No giant cannons or destructive clouds.  No enormous robots or a wing of attack-saucers.  Instead the aliens have brought the weapon of foreknowledge.  By learning their language, humans can learn how to see the future.  And by learning to see the future they realise there is a future to see.  Which means, horrifyingly, that all our fates are set.  There is nothing, apparently, we can do to change the future ahead, and all we can do is ride it out.  When you think about it, no weapon ever brought to our blue planet has ever done as much damage as this.  Imagine living in a world where you know all your dissapointments, all your shortcomings, all your failures lain out ahead of you, unable to do anything about them.  No wonder Amy Adams doesn't tell Jeremy Renner what will happen to their future daughter, although not telling him still doesn't stop him from leaving her. 

In the same tone as Contact, or even Blade Runner for that matter, The Arrival is a complicated and intense science fiction drama, packed with big ideas, stuffed with other ideas.  With no fanfare at all, giant alien ships arrive, all around the planet.  Nothing blows up, no one dies, it's just a thing that suddenly happens.  The lead character, played by Amy Adams, is a top level linguist with top secret clearance, so the military calls upon her for help.  Along with Jeremy Renner (astrophysicist), they are brought to a field in Montana, where one of these ships sits.  A very intense sequence brings us into the Alien ship, where the giant elephant-like Aliens stand behind a huge screen.  Neither species can understand the other.  The Aliens make odd trumpeting-like noises, and can create circular writings on the wall.  the military want answers - what do the aliens want?

What unfolds is a dramatic and tense series of events where the human team have a couple of hours per day to experiment with ways of conversing before having to go back to their tents and review everything.  in the meantime, various other countries are also trying various things with the own alien ships, and to start with everyone is openly conversing with everyone else.

But of course the humans screw everything up.  Nations start distrusting each other, the CIA wants to shut everything down, and the soldiers resent not being able to blow up E.T, but that's not even the most difficult part.  Amy keeps flashing away to remember her poor daughter who suffered from a fatal disease from birth.  The film turns very philosophical as we start talking about the choices we make and then how we deal with those choices, and how we wouldn't change them even if we could.  It's a bravely emotional film, wrapped as it is in the military and giant aliens and stuff. It's one of the more smart and thoughtful blockbuster films to come along in a while, and it gives us something to discuss about as well, which is always welcome. Four and a half satellite phones out of Five.

- Peace out