Year: 2016
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Oh fuck me. Yes, I am still on a giddy post-cinema high, but this might just be the best science fiction movie I’ve ever seen.
It’s a first contact story, sparked off when twelve mysterious craft appear in locations all over the world. The US military enlist a linguistic expert, Dr Louise Banks (played by an excellent Amy Adams), to travel to the landing site in Montana and aid efforts to communicate with the aliens in order to discover the purpose behind their arrival, while in the background the global reaction threatens to slide into conflict. To say much more would be getting into spoiler territory – trust me, there is one word I am dying to type here to give some idea of what the film is about, but I’m scared lest it give too much away.
As someone who has consumed a great deal of science fiction, written and cinematic, there’s a feeling you get when you’re reading a great SF novel and you suddenly click with the concepts and ideas. It’s like someone has pried open the top of your head and filled it with light, changing the way you’re looking at what’s going on. I rarely get that feeling with SF films (don’t get me wrong, I love them, and I get other things out of them, but that sense of intellectual exploration and philosophical enquiry is usually absent). Blade Runner came close, as did 2001 (which is echoed quite heavily in the first half hour here). Interstellar fell embarrassingly short after selling itself on exactly that kind of promise, but Arrival delivers it in spades. Yes, there are spaceships and aliens, but this is far removed from a zippy shoot em up space opera. It’s great to see a movie that focuses on intellectual effort rather than action (there is a subplot around a bomb that induces some tense moments but ultimately has no bearing on the outcome of the movie). I guess the closest word to what I felt while watching it was delight, as the pieces slot slowly slot into place and you realise exactly what’s going on. I may have made this film sound like a dry intellectual exercise, but there’s a real emotional story at its heart, along with some genuinely tense and exciting moments. I absolutely loved it.
Denis Villeneuve’s previous movie was the excellent Sicario. His next is Blade Runner 2, which sounds like a colossally bad idea, but if anyone can pull it off, I’m starting to think he can.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
really good films
I’ve been excited for this movie all year, and you’ve just cranked it up another notch.
Unfortunately, the film I’m scheduled to see tomorrow night is Jack Reacher 2.
What a week.
Well, you know, in the cold light of day I might go “hang on…”, but I don’t think I will. I’ve been out of the cinema two hours and I’m still buzzing about it. And even if I do, it’ll probably still be better than Jack Reacher 2…
Oh my! I’ve been really looking forward to this after the trailers, and now I really can’t wait!! Great review, thanks!
Saw this this afternoon – and its got more ideas in its first ten minutes than Rogue One – on the trailers – will probably have in two hours. They both have spaceships and aliens, but whereas Star Wars is pure space opera, Arrival sets out to be brainy sci-fi along the lines of Interstellar and Moon. I loved Amy Adams performance, and it’s refreshing to see Jeremy Renner tagging along as the underused male sidekick (rather than the usual vice-versa). Its powered by ideas of linguistics and communication. The ending does struggle to tie all the ends together – and while it resorts at times to the semi-mystical it does a hell of a better job than Interstellar’s black hole library trip.
Went with my 16yo son yesterday. Was slightly worried he’d bemoan the lack of space-lasers and and stuff blowing up, but no, he was utterly transfixed. Spoke about it all the way home, espousing theories on what we’d just witnessed. An astonishing film.
We went to see it this afternoon – it was beautiful, mature, and satisfying. And serendipitously timely. (?timely-ey?)
I’m a bit of a dim bulb when it comes to Time non-linearity stuff so I’m going to enjoy watching it again, several times. And no, that’s NOT because of Amy Adams’ ongoing beauty, credibility, and all-round likeability*.
Don’t anybody be put off by my po-faced phrase ‘Time non-linearity’; this is a film by and for people with hearts and souls as well as brains.
(*well, not entirely).
PS great review, Kid.
PPS and there were some wonderful moments when you could hear the otherwise-pin-drop-silent audience’s goosepimples collectively rise.
Glad you enjoyed it. It wasn’t for me. I found it portentous, not-all-that-inspiring, monotonous to look at (although I’m with Jeff on Amy Adams’ all round likeability) and, in the end, irritating more than anything else. An excellent first hour or so let down by a disappointing third act that left me not caring a great deal. Normally love this sort of caper – both Interstellar and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind left me in tatters – but here, not so much. I’m sure it’s my loss.
Close Encounters scored by Sigur Ros and Scott Walker crossed with the Torchwood series ‘Children Of Earth’.
I *think* I understood it but could we rent space in a church basement and talk each other down?
The chances of a film of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhoods End now being made must be very small.
If it’s anything like 2001, good – “bag o shite” as Barry Norman used to say
no…Barry Norman used to say LOADSAMONEY !!!!
No. He used to put one hand on his hip (a la teapot), then point into the gap going ‘Where’s Me Washboard?’
‘Av you seen it, Robert De Niro?
I’m not sure the Cinema Review Orthodoxy star chamber will let you get away with that. Expect a knock on the door from some people with 50’s haircuts and bad skin sometime soon. Your re-education sessions will be painless.
(I agree with you about 2001 tho. Half an hour of aceness in space does not make up for the other three hours of wasted, er, space)
There was a pretty expensive three part tv miniseries of Childhood’s End just over a year ago (Charles Dance was Karellen) – I’d say that nixes the prospect of a movie anytime soon..
Ah, I didn’t know that.
The spacecraft in Arrival just hanging there reminded me of the ‘Presences’ in Banksy’s last Culture novel.
Just out of (finally) seeing it.
It hit my buttons so squarely that I almost don’t trust myself to judge it, but I think it’s a masterpiece and I found myself weeping over something that wasn’t real for the first time in a very, very long time.
I’m now heading directly into a screening of Snowden. This is a bad idea, isn’t it?