The Quiet Brilliance of Arrival

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2018)

"If you could see your whole life from start to finish... would you change things?"
Denis Villeneuve's Arrival is both a beautiful representation of how far the sci-fi genre has come since the early days, and a conscious and uniquely challenging glimpse at what it truly means to appreciate and respect the values of a life- YOUR life- and what it's all worth living for. I had heard about the movie from several people who urged me to see it simply because "they knew I would be into it." From what I could see, it was a mysteriously coded and detailed glimpse into what actual alien contact would be like, how the world at large would perceive it, and how far would we go to be able to understand them and get a sense of what exactly they were here on Earth to do. What I didn't realize is that those things were not actually the true core of the film; what I didn't realize until much much later into the film, is that Arrival is secretly more of a story about humanity than any incomprehensible alien life form.
What do I mean by this? Well, in observing how the humans in the film deal with various issues brought up in the movie, we begin to examine humanity's faults much more than we do the aliens. These creatures are literally unknowable; the humans don't know anything about them, they can't communicate with them, they have no idea of their intentions. It's up to Amy Adams (in one of her most daring performances yet as Louise) to translate the alien's weird cryptic language and come up with a way to achieve an understanding of how they think so that their purpose can be defined.
The film delves heavily into the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis," or the theory that the structure of a language determines or greatly influences thoughts and characteristics of the culture in which it is spoken, to show that by understanding the language of these immense and complex alien creatures, Louise begins to think like them; she sees what they see, and it turns out that they perceive things in a much different way from how we do, literally having thoughts that exist outside the boundaries of time. In most films that deal with an alien threat through extermination or infiltration, this film is more about connection through language (An extremely relevant topic) and how sometimes things just can't be comprehended, only experienced.
There is a huge twist in this film that talking about would be a disservice to a person's first view of it. I will only say that it is one of the true mind blowing realizations of modern cinema (M Night Shyamalan be damned) and it forces you to rethink EVERYTHING you just watched in the film from start to finish. Arrival is genuinely complex, not in a hipster "too cool for mainstream" way or a "rage against the machine" way, but SERIOUSLY gets you thinking and wondering how all of this fits together. Ultimately, it asks the question of whether or not it's worth it to give your own life meaning, and what you might choose to do if you realized that many things were in fact meaningless.
Arrival is a film that I recommend you watch by yourself. Yes, it is a film that you might need to have some time to think about afterwards. I only wish to say that I highly recommend Arrival to the questioning mind, to the science fiction enthusiast who cares less about lore and solving every riddle and more about simply enjoying the moments that are being presented to them.
I am one of those people, and I loved Arrival simply for the experience. It's truly a masterful story that fits together just the right elements of creepy, unsettling, heartfelt, madness and emotion enough to feel very satisfying.