Arrival
Why are so many going so gaga over Arrival?
Did the election drive us to the point where we all need a hug, and Amy
Adams is standing there with her arms wide open in the form of a soft,
soulful alien movie?
Adams stars as Louise - a leading linguistics professor suffering from
personal loss. One day, a group of 12 strange alien space ships arrive
on Earth, and Louise is recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to
begin communication with the visitors to determine why the heck they
showed up here in the first place.
As Louise interacts with the aliens and learns their language, she
begins to hallucinate, dream, hear voices and all around act like the
stress and pressure are causing her to fall apart.
Is she learning their language or misconstruing it all?
Has she become compromised by the work or the alien interaction?
Arrival wants to be a heady, intellectual alien movie, but it turns out to be hokey malarkey.
We are used to our alien movies focusing on how we earthlings will
start blowing up the invaders and chasing them back to their pathetic
universe (complete with a snarky one-liner from Will Smith), but
Arrival is all about TALKING to the aliens and sharing our FEELINGS.
That might be refreshing to some, but it was so boring to me I
couldn’t tell if Louise was having those dreams or I had fallen
asleep and had them myself.
Arrival takes on a dreamlike, hallucinatory
feel after starting off promisingly as a mysterious film with impending
danger just around the corner driving home the tension and giving us
pause each time disaster seems imminent.
However, director Denis Villenueve and writer Eric Heisserer (based on
the short story by Ted Chiang) remove that edge to plunge the audience
into murkiness. It’s an alien movie that has lost its fangs or
had its claws removed as the main focus shifts away from the aliens and
onto Louise and her personal struggles.
Villenueve provides great imagery as we see the alien vessel standing
tall in a vacant field as the fog rolls in, or a helicopter emerging
over the horizon destroying the tranquility. It’s a wonderful way
to support the themes of isolation and loneliness that become central
to the ending and the rest of the story.
Arrival is all Adams despite the presence of
Whitaker and Jeremey Renner. Yet, even with Adams emoting her heart
out, the film fades as Villeneuve tries to make it mystical with some
sort of hippy dippy new age feel.
Arrival should have stayed home.
Arrival is rated PG-13 for brief
strong language.
116 Minutes
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