At-times innovative take on a "first contact" ... but not as subtle as it thinks it is

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2016)

As the title suggests, "Arrival" is sci-fi (based on a Ted Chiang book not called "Arrival"), ostensibly about the arrival of enigmatic alien spacecraft and ensuing attempts to communicate. It is from French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, and one can sense an intense ("non-American") desire here to prove that a subtly cerebral approach can outperform a big-bucks SFX-dominated alien movie. Given my panning of emptily-whizz-bang new "Star Wars" and "Independence Day" movies, I was ready to believe.
But...
The film starts OK with a hyper-minimalist but genuinely affecting encapsulation of reaction to the appearance of 12 alien craft around the world. This works, and is tense, impressive and fun.
Alas, audience doubt begins as Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) first meets our hero - linguist Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams). Whitaker normally grabs a movie and dominates with his great abilities and presence, but here he largely fails, delivering terse (sometimes witty) Colonel-type lines that do not really need his skills. He is mainly background. Indeed, in "Arrival", EVERYBODY is background to Banks, including (virtually) the only other key character - astrophysicist Dr Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner).
The fact that our two boffins are only at doctoral level is telling. And a further sign of slapdash (reason for doubt as to quality in depth) appears as the first Banks-Weber meeting ends, and the former warns the latter against cooperation with another linguist, on the basis that the latter mistranslated a word from Sanskrit! Given a US military seeking out the greatest experts to deal with the biggest issue ever faced, we in the real world would be WAY beyond mistranslations of single words from a language in which Sir William Jones was an expert back in the 18th century!
And that typifies "Arrival". Superficially, it's straining its sinews to be clever and nuanced, but it just isn't, because "defence in depth" is lacking.
If a film eschews big-bucks effects for intellect, then brain there needs to be. Here the story focuses down to the team making linguistic contact - leaving some viewers secretly longing to see the growing fear and chaos which "Arrival" summarises through TV news feeds, as well as (just) one aerial shot implying that millions have dropped everything to drive to Montana for a peep.
The focusing in goes so far in fact that only Banks matters, with other support characters - even Donnelly - in the shade. This is amazing in a two-hour film, but also cheap and actually unsubtle, and one-dimensional. Nothing of the kind could be said of that (early) special-effects-fest "Close Encounters", which remains impressive and extremely moving, including - indeed especially - for scientists. If you push beyond the first Richard Dreyfuss-type story, "Close Encounters" has layer after layer of realistic-looking scientific approach to the events portrayed. Under Spielberg, people who look like a genuine team of experts from every field are shown as well-prepared, doing things real experts would do. Everybody has a task, and performs said task faithfully and tellingly - whether centre-stage or in the wings.
In "Arrival", the minutes pass, and yet the support team remain unknown and mainly stereotypical, and (mostly) seem to be doing irrational things, or nothing at all!
As "Close Encounters" shows, the very idea that aliens would choose Earth, and make it here FUNDAMENTALLY undermines the non-communication plot. They would have monitored our broadcasts, and gone online on closer arrival. Inability to speak would not prevent understanding. In Spielberg's magnum opus, hand signals, music and a simple form of mind control helped. In "Arrival" in contrast, the aliens' fiendishly complicated language has to be decoded by Banks, and this marks a high-point of the film ... for those accepting the need for translation. But these aliens also turn out to have mind control, so why all the messing about?
It's just not logical...
On the plus side, Banks's insight into the culture and motivations of the heptapod aliens is cleverer stuff. But it's her solo effort that has got us there, and that is not realistic.
Thankfully, the film ends with its audience gaining adequate insight into various things that have gone before, with the character of Gen. Shang coming to the fore. Like "2012" (an effects-rich film, certainly, but also self-believing and pretty cohesive), "Arrival" reminds us that cooperation with China is make or break now, and that's interesting, Indeed, when Shang emerges from the background, we have a VERY powerful (if so-brief) contribution from Tzi Ma to enjoy.
The (very) ending here has some clout, and is moving, given that it also addresses the family circumstances of the main character(s). This IS the subtle part tacked on to several hours of less-than-adequate alien stuff. But can that really be justified?
Indeed, if the family-oriented ending is moving, the rest of "Arrival" is mainly emotion-free, and certainly joyless, unlike "Close Encounters" or "Star Trek: First Contact". There is tension/fear, puzzlement and (occasionally) mission, but no real hint at the wonder of what is happening, right up there with the risk. This is a flawed lack of realism, given that devoted exobiologists and others would do the job, but also find it supremely meaningful.
With its strongish ending and an at-moments interesting work on efforts to understand a language, "Arrival" is not without pluses; but it could have done better. What is more, "Star Trek" and even "Dr Who" have dealt regularly with communication issues/barriers vis-a-vis aliens, and these short-episode shows HAVE managed to pose more interesting questions, and achieve loftier intellectual heights, than "Arrival", for all its pretensions. That should raise an alarm for both those who want to be subtle in sci-fi and those who want to dazzle us with effects. There is ALREADY a successful middle-course out there. People have ALREADY combined intellect and spectacle in alien-focused sci-fi - even back in the 70s.
Can today's film makers not match that?