By Teri Bayus
Arrival is a cerebral film, but that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t intense, or thoroughly interesting and entertaining.
While there may not always be something exciting happening on the screen, there is something to think about in what you are being shown.
Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguistics Professor. She appears to be living alone leading a quiet life, devoted to her profession and teaching.
The arrival of a number of spaceships and extraterrestrial beings leads her to become the leading consultant for the U.S. Government, in an attempt to communicate with the alien visitors.
Banks discovers their enigmatic language — based on circular rings — and learns an unexpected truth about time and her own life.
Something that is always a challenge for this particular genre is the creativity, as there can be endless possibilities but also that danger of becoming so unbelievable it becomes ridiculous or possibly annoying.
The Arrival is a believable story and has a deeper meaning than just the usual alien encounters with an unknown purpose.
It’s tackles how we, the human race, might deal with an unexplored situation like this and begs to question humanity as a whole, hoping that our stupidity does not get the better of us. There’s so much more to the plot than what any trailer suggested.
As far-reaching and mind-bending as the ideas are as to why the aliens are here, there is a focus on the personal lives and relationships of characters. There is a larger sense of size and scale beyond us, the framing often showing the characters as small and the spaceship and aliens as large in scope and size.
Later in the film, however, the characters are often framed in the foreground, with the spaceship out of focus in the background, depicting their own lives as constantly their main focus rather than the bigger picture.
I liked that no matter what, our personal experiences and relationships define us.
This is a great movie to see with friends and then discuss for hours after.
