Film review: Arrival

Hello readers! This week, I rewatched Arrival (2016). Not quite sure what prompted me to do so: maybe it was the bizarre US Congress hearing, where ex-military personnel attested to seeing UFOs? Maybe it was the fact that Netflix has been pushing me to watch this film since I added it to my list a few months back? Maybe it’s because freewill is just an illusion. In any case, Arrival is one hell of a film – and watching it a second time was worth it.

Before we start, let it be known that Arrival is very good. This means that I will respect its artistic integrity and split this post into two parts: one for people who haven’t seen it (and should), and one for people who have seen it (and should again). Part one will contain only very minor spoilers, intended to give you a reason to watch it. Part two will contain major spoilers and a detailed discussion, intended for people who have already seen the film and want to listen to someone pulling it apart. You have been warned.

PART ONE: VERY MINOR SPOILERS

As you might guess from its title, and as you would certainly guess from its movie posters, Arrival is about the sudden, unexpected arrival of alien spacecraft on planet Earth. Our protagonist is Dr Louise Banks, a linguist who is enlisted by the US government to communicate with the beings on board the ships. Although this film is certainly science fiction, it is surprisingly light on the science. Instead, it focusses more on mindset and empathy, and on the inherent difficulties in communicating with a culture so incomprehensibly different from your own. Like many great works of science fiction, the technology is only the “what if…?” prompt, used as a platform to dissect human attitudes and behaviours.

The obvious pull of this film, to the popcorn-munching brigade who determined its financial success, is the allure of aliens suddenly arriving out of the blue. This concept has been visited countless times before, and yet Arrival still manages to stand out in a crowded field. I remembered the opening third of this film more vividly than the rest, because it captures the fear and intrigue incredibly well – and all from the perspective of one character, watching the twenty-four-hour news roll in just like the rest of us would. The slow reveal of the ships and their inhabitants is masterful (especially if you go in totally ignorant, like I did the first time around), and the inhabitants themselves are something else. No more spoilers here.

As mentioned earlier, Arrival is less about the science, and more about human nature. This is perfectly captured by the character of Dr Banks, who is continually forced to justify her decisions and methods to impatient politicians, arrogant scientists and trigger-happy military generals. It’s difficult to describe the more emotional moments of this film without ruining their impact, but Amy Adams is absolutely fantastic in the lead role. The acting in this film suits the tone perfectly, and it strikes that lovely balance of saying an awful lot without too much talking.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, this is the end of the line for you. Skip the next part, and skip the summary. I won’t take it personally, and I’m certainly not making money from your view time (I wish). See you next week!

PART TWO: VERY MAJOR SPOILERS

Here we go. A discussion of things that happen later in the film, which will ruin the “twist” (more of a slow realisation) if you haven’t seen it yet. Reader discretion advised.

The tone of Arrival sets it apart

From the summary of this film, you might be forgiven for thinking that Arrival was a disaster movie, following in the footsteps of Independence Day. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth – and the result is a breath of fresh air. We only ever get the feeling of potential disaster, because the alien ships just sit there, waiting, learning to communicate. Most of the tension and awe inspired by this film comes from the intrigue of the unknown, with the big question being: why are they here? We have no idea how the ships got there, or what destruction they might cause, and so the pervasive sense of threat comes from our own imaginings of the fallout should anything go wrong. This, in turn, forces us to confront our preconceptions – and, as it happens, the film never devolves into a disaster movie. We never learn how the aliens might respond to large-scale provocation, and so the sense of mystery holds out until the very end. We never really learn much about the aliens at all.

Arrival always plays to its strengths. It is clever, rather than bombastic; indeed, most of the film occurs in one of three settings: inside a dingy room on board the ship, inside a dingy makeshift laboratory next to the ship, or in transit between the dingy laboratory and the dingy spaceship. It ends up being grungy and claustrophobic, and yet it still manages to be more of a spectacle than many lesser science fiction films which only ever aimed to be eye candy.

Another thing that sets this film apart is that we aren’t forced to root for a maverick (one day from retiring, basically an alcoholic since Karen took the goddamn kids, the only one who can fly this piece of junk, etc. etc.). Dr Banks is a much more believable character, managing to ride the line between nervous, assertive, intelligent and sympathetic. In truth, the story is more about how her life changed when the aliens arrived, and the decisions she made as a result, rather than being about the aliens themselves.

Space magic

I can see that some people might be unimpressed by the revelation that the aliens perceive time in a nonlinear fashion. Any plot that tries to handle time-travel or premonition opens the doors to classic problems such as branching timelines and paradoxes, and yet Arrival seems to take the stance that there is no “free will”, everything is pre-determined, and what will be will be. By learning the alien language, Dr Banks starts seeing all parts of her life simultaneously, which is something of a mind-bending concept. She sees the daughter she will have, and she sees that daughter dying at a young age.

On the one hand, it is easy for us to treat these insights like premonitions, giving Dr Banks the opportunity to change her life accordingly. The film certainly makes these visions seem like premonitions, because how else could they fit into a linear narrative? However, the way that Dr Banks describes the alien perspective is that it has no beginning and no end. In this sense, there can be no premonitions, because nothing comes before or after anything else. A life simply is what it is, all happening at once. At least, that seems to be what the film is going for, most of the time. The problem is that the narrative starts getting a little muddled in the final act.

In the climax of the film, when China has waged war on the alien spacecraft and is about to launch an attack, Dr Banks uses her new-found perception to save the day. She does this by remembering her “future”, where the Chinese military general hands her his personal phone number, and gives her a step-by-step account of how she convinced him to halt the attack. By using this knowledge in the “present”, she calls up the general and stops him hitting the red button. I accepted this during the film – but having pondered it more, I think it raises quite a few questions.

If we are presented with nonlinear time, where everything happens all at once and there can be no free will, then no decision carries any weight. This premise feels a bit vague when, on the one hand, one of the aliens dies in an “unexpected” explosion, and when, on the other hand, Dr Banks can save the day by “seeing the future”. Which is it? Is it both?

Nonlinear time is something of a predicament. When the aliens are experiencing their life, do they get to make conscious decisions, or are they rendered more of an outsider, watching from the sidelines thinking “oh yeah, this is the bit where I get pulverised in an explosion”? This is something that the film doesn’t make clear. Does Dr Banks end up watching her life like a movie, or does she continue to make conscious decisions?

Questions left unanswered

As much as I love this film, the final act is probably the weakest, simply because it leaves a few too many questions unanswered. This might well be the point – I don’t know. The aliens explain that they came to Earth to give humanity the gift of their language, which also gives anyone who understands it the ability to see the past, present and future at once. They claim that they bring this gift in order to buy humanity’s trust, because they will require our aid 3,000 years in the future. This point doesn’t quite get enough time to sink in, given the strong emphasis placed on understanding the aliens’ purpose at the start of the film. Also, given the issues surrounding freewill and fixed futures, what are we to infer about the timing of this visit? About the inevitability of humanity’s expansion into space, and our future involvement with aliens? These questions are never explored, because the film is centred around the life of Dr Banks.

Imagine this: there is an entire species of creatures who perceive time instantaneously, with their life passing by in no particular order. Assuming that they aren’t immortal, with infinite memories, then each individual can still learn what will happen thousands of years into the future simply via a chain of communication with their offspring, up to the point when their species goes extinct. It certainly renders the question “what is your purpose here?” kind of meaningless; they’re here because they’re here because they’re here. The way the film pitches it, the aliens made a conscious choice to forge an alliance with humanity in the face of impending crisis, and yet the way time works in this film, the aliens had no choice but to make this conscious choice.

The problem with destiny paradoxes like this is that they end up feeling a little hollow. In a universe where just one species perceives time in a nonlinear fashion, everything must be predetermined. Nothing can stray from the course – not even the distant creatures who perceive time in a linear fashion. No human in this film has free will either. In effect, what Arrival does is crush any commercial dreams of a cinematic multiverse.

This single-timeline approach also leads to something that I’m fairly sure is a plot hole – although I could be wrong. At one point, the scientists discover that the aliens have given them 1/12th of a message. Given that there are twelve mysterious ships, they assume that this is a deliberate ploy from the aliens to get them to work together, or to drive them apart (this debate takes up a significant amount of plot time). However, this entire setup is rendered meaningless. Dr Banks manages to learn enough of the language on her own that she is able to “see into the future” where she has already become fluent. As such, she unlocks the entire language in seconds. The whole point of the aliens coming to Earth was to give the gift of their language, and once they have passed it on to Dr Banks, all twelve ships leave. They passed on only 1/12th of the message, because that was all that was required.

I feel as if this wouldn’t have been such an oversight if it was only acknowledged as a shortcut. These aliens are meant to be higher beings with the ability to see into the future – so why send many ship when one ship do trick? Unfortunately, the concept of destiny can get writers out of a lot of holes. Maybe, to the aliens watching their lives unfold in no particular order, this was just the part where they messed up and sent too many ships. Maybe the whole escapade was meaningless.

On a more positive note

It’s safe to say that Arrival, and especially its first half, had a big impact on me the first time I watched it. Not to be too self-promotional here, but my first book trilogy is also a part of the “big ship appears unexpectedly” genre. I’d argue that my books aren’t too derivative, given that my plot and characters were already in development in 2014, but I must have watched Arrival at a critical moment in pulling everything together. Certain themes really spoke to me, and still do, especially the concept of aliens arriving and just waiting, rather than attacking. I absolutely love the tension that builds up between two alien cultures trying to understand each other, becoming increasingly paranoid.

However, Arrival never digs too deeply into the uncertainty created by having a potential enemy lurking on the doorstep. We see clips of news reports, and we see the way that the military react, but we never get to experience how an ordinary person would feel in this scenario. The film is almost entirely from the perspective of Dr Banks, and as I mentioned earlier, this is really a story about her – not the aliens. The global ramifications of the ships appearing just plays out in the background, and the politics are treated more like obstacles to Dr Banks’ success rather than the main intrigue. This is not to the film’s detriment, of course – I just really like the questions raised by the setup in the first half.

In summary…

Hope you enjoyed this review! It wasn’t as funny as usual, because it’s hard to praise something if your tone is only semi-sincere. Turns out that serious posts also take longer to write – so you can expect a return to the usual levity next week.

In the meantime, I have added a “Blog Archive” link to the home page. If you want to dive back into older posts, they are all available there, organised by theme or by date. Have fun!