There are people on Earth, right at this moment, who don’t have words for colors. They literally think blue and green are the same thing because they don’t have two separate words for them. Some don’t have words for numbers. Some don’t have words that indicate past or future verb tenses. Consequently, even after millennia of human advancement, some groups haven’t progressed because they haven’t created words that would allow them to progress. Imagine how difficult life would be if your brain couldn’t comprehend the difference between five berries and twenty berries. How do you trade or keep track of supplies? Imagine not having words for what may happen next month. How do you plan anything or work together as a group? Some cultures who don’t have past tenses are lucky to remember a single grandparent out of four, since age and history have no meaning. How do you develop long-term relationships or learn from previous mistakes? The human brain creates its world by giving it words. For many, life itself is only as good as the language available to explain it.
So is it language that defines civilization? Or is it science, the ability to discover such complexities of life, that defines us? This is the debate that is played out in the new science fiction film, Arrival. When 12 alien ships suddenly appear in various locations around the globe, each nation must figure out how to deal with its intruder individually and determine the intent of the collective. Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguistics professor and translation consultant who is asked by the U.S. military to decipher communication from the visitors. Physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) is brought in to provide scientific perspective. Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and CIA Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg) attempt to follow political protocol while uncovering the mystery of why the aliens have arrived and what they may want from us. As the world frantically awaits the potential destruction of life as we know it, Banks takes time to learn from the visitors, and in the process, learns something even more important about herself.
Many alien invasion stories throughout cinematic history have aimed for political parallels, and this one does as well. With questions so present in our minds of how America should respond to refugees, immigrants, terrorists, or anyone else that may come to our shores, Arrival offers a clear message for confronting Others. Communication first, rather than force, should be our modus operandi. The allegory in place here borders on heavy-handed, but it’s understandable.
It is in the way that Banks approaches her task of reaching out to the aliens that makes this film so unique, and so special. Banks shows her colleagues, and the audience, the value of language—how words and phrases change our perceptions of reality. So Banks works to speak to, and listen to, the aliens. She begins like a parent would with a child, with concrete words such as “human” and “walk,” and then moves to more complex elements like pronouns, prepositions, and words that have multiple meanings. The film’s tension is increased when the word “weapon” appears, and we have to consider that the word could imply a threat of violence, but it may also simply mean a tool. Recognizing the aliens’ meaning of the word, and this applies in our own lives, can be the difference between life and death. Taking the sci-fi genre out of the realm of deafening explosions and complex spaceships and into a lesson on grammar is daring, to say the least, but it is a brilliant deconstruction of not only the film genre, but of human interaction itself.
Director Denis Villenueve (Sicario, Prisoners, Enemy) is known for pushing audiences to explore moral and psychological questions, to reconcile their sense of reality with a world that doesn’t always match their perceptions. The film avoids the spectacle of the modern sci-fi genre—no intergalactic battles, no harrowing escapes or cartoonish CGI. The special effects employed are effective, yet subtle, and are not for visual amazement, but for advancing character. Even the aliens here (called heptapods), though we never see a face or anything resembling anthropomorphic qualities, seem to have personalities that pierce through the communication barrier and effectively display the “friend or foe” dilemma of the film.
Villenueve focuses on Adams’s face more than any other image, inviting us to witness her mental struggle, as well as participate with her in solving this existential mystery. Adams is our conduit to this other world and into our own. We are shown that Banks has lost a daughter to illness in recent years, and she continues to carry the pain with her. Her memories aid in her connection to the aliens, the passion for reaching out, learning, and understanding written across her face. And her present reality is shaped by events on the timeline of life. She must determine the meaning of free will and what consequences her choices hold. Banks’s struggle is our struggle, and Adams allows us to identify with her on a fundamentally human level. Adams continues to show herself as one of the best actresses in Hollywood today, and her quiet portrayal of a desperate mother/researcher raises our respect for Banks in ways that an overly expressive performance never could. She is able to say more with a longing look than with any tearful breakdown. Adams, surrounded by males in a traditionally male-dominated genre, carries the film on her shoulders effortlessly.
The film does fall into some unfortunate stereotypes, with some clear socio-political messages mixed in: there is a comment about a particular brand of news coverage, a caricature of talk-radio, and the persistent theme of military and political personnel only wanting to blow stuff up. That only intellectuals can save the world is an increasingly common vision in both Hollywood and beyond. The sad irony, of course, is that if the aliens of Arrival greeted us with laser cannons (as in Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.) instead of ink blots, those same intellectuals would scream at the failure of the military to protect us. Villenueve doesn’t dwell on these elements, but they are hard to ignore.
And there is the matter of whether the theory Banks presents fits with scientific reality. Saying there are some plot “holes” might be a little harsh, but there are certainly elements that are left unexplained. This linguistic equation is underdeveloped in some respects, and there is a glitch in the narrative that nearly ruins this story (for me, anyway), but much of the film’s flaws are forgivable due to the intent of the endeavor and the execution of the production. Renner feels underused here, but Whitaker and Stuhlbarg are solid, as they continue to be two of the best character actors working today.
I appreciate a film that tries hard to offer something new, especially in a well-worn genre. This film demands a fair amount of mental stamina from the audience—it is rather slow moving and the physics and linguistics implications will rattle brains long afterward—but it is well worth the journey. Arrival is a fraction away from being one of the best films I’ve seen in the last two years. It is smart, challenging, and brave enough to tell a science fiction story with character and nuance rather than showy visuals. And it gives us the ultimate reason for studying the Humanities: they transcend humanity.
Grade: B+
So is it language that defines civilization? Or is it science, the ability to discover such complexities of life, that defines us? This is the debate that is played out in the new science fiction film, Arrival. When 12 alien ships suddenly appear in various locations around the globe, each nation must figure out how to deal with its intruder individually and determine the intent of the collective. Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguistics professor and translation consultant who is asked by the U.S. military to decipher communication from the visitors. Physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) is brought in to provide scientific perspective. Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and CIA Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg) attempt to follow political protocol while uncovering the mystery of why the aliens have arrived and what they may want from us. As the world frantically awaits the potential destruction of life as we know it, Banks takes time to learn from the visitors, and in the process, learns something even more important about herself.
Many alien invasion stories throughout cinematic history have aimed for political parallels, and this one does as well. With questions so present in our minds of how America should respond to refugees, immigrants, terrorists, or anyone else that may come to our shores, Arrival offers a clear message for confronting Others. Communication first, rather than force, should be our modus operandi. The allegory in place here borders on heavy-handed, but it’s understandable.
It is in the way that Banks approaches her task of reaching out to the aliens that makes this film so unique, and so special. Banks shows her colleagues, and the audience, the value of language—how words and phrases change our perceptions of reality. So Banks works to speak to, and listen to, the aliens. She begins like a parent would with a child, with concrete words such as “human” and “walk,” and then moves to more complex elements like pronouns, prepositions, and words that have multiple meanings. The film’s tension is increased when the word “weapon” appears, and we have to consider that the word could imply a threat of violence, but it may also simply mean a tool. Recognizing the aliens’ meaning of the word, and this applies in our own lives, can be the difference between life and death. Taking the sci-fi genre out of the realm of deafening explosions and complex spaceships and into a lesson on grammar is daring, to say the least, but it is a brilliant deconstruction of not only the film genre, but of human interaction itself.
Director Denis Villenueve (Sicario, Prisoners, Enemy) is known for pushing audiences to explore moral and psychological questions, to reconcile their sense of reality with a world that doesn’t always match their perceptions. The film avoids the spectacle of the modern sci-fi genre—no intergalactic battles, no harrowing escapes or cartoonish CGI. The special effects employed are effective, yet subtle, and are not for visual amazement, but for advancing character. Even the aliens here (called heptapods), though we never see a face or anything resembling anthropomorphic qualities, seem to have personalities that pierce through the communication barrier and effectively display the “friend or foe” dilemma of the film.
Villenueve focuses on Adams’s face more than any other image, inviting us to witness her mental struggle, as well as participate with her in solving this existential mystery. Adams is our conduit to this other world and into our own. We are shown that Banks has lost a daughter to illness in recent years, and she continues to carry the pain with her. Her memories aid in her connection to the aliens, the passion for reaching out, learning, and understanding written across her face. And her present reality is shaped by events on the timeline of life. She must determine the meaning of free will and what consequences her choices hold. Banks’s struggle is our struggle, and Adams allows us to identify with her on a fundamentally human level. Adams continues to show herself as one of the best actresses in Hollywood today, and her quiet portrayal of a desperate mother/researcher raises our respect for Banks in ways that an overly expressive performance never could. She is able to say more with a longing look than with any tearful breakdown. Adams, surrounded by males in a traditionally male-dominated genre, carries the film on her shoulders effortlessly.
The film does fall into some unfortunate stereotypes, with some clear socio-political messages mixed in: there is a comment about a particular brand of news coverage, a caricature of talk-radio, and the persistent theme of military and political personnel only wanting to blow stuff up. That only intellectuals can save the world is an increasingly common vision in both Hollywood and beyond. The sad irony, of course, is that if the aliens of Arrival greeted us with laser cannons (as in Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.) instead of ink blots, those same intellectuals would scream at the failure of the military to protect us. Villenueve doesn’t dwell on these elements, but they are hard to ignore.
And there is the matter of whether the theory Banks presents fits with scientific reality. Saying there are some plot “holes” might be a little harsh, but there are certainly elements that are left unexplained. This linguistic equation is underdeveloped in some respects, and there is a glitch in the narrative that nearly ruins this story (for me, anyway), but much of the film’s flaws are forgivable due to the intent of the endeavor and the execution of the production. Renner feels underused here, but Whitaker and Stuhlbarg are solid, as they continue to be two of the best character actors working today.
I appreciate a film that tries hard to offer something new, especially in a well-worn genre. This film demands a fair amount of mental stamina from the audience—it is rather slow moving and the physics and linguistics implications will rattle brains long afterward—but it is well worth the journey. Arrival is a fraction away from being one of the best films I’ve seen in the last two years. It is smart, challenging, and brave enough to tell a science fiction story with character and nuance rather than showy visuals. And it gives us the ultimate reason for studying the Humanities: they transcend humanity.
Grade: B+