A thoughtful, haunting take on a familiar story - with layers to explore

Rating: 9/10 (15 April 2019)

I didn't realise this was such a dark film. Seeing it in the cinema on release I had been so overwhelmed by the sound, the cinematography and Amy Adams's mesmeric performance that this passed me by. I'm not talking about tone, of course; this films ends in a place of hope and invitation. I mean in light levels. Most - or all? - of the exterior scenes of the film take place in shadows, or with the sun evidently just one side of the horizon or the other. Interiors are low lit also; I notice two exceptions - the spotlight shone from a helicopter in to Amy Adams's face when Forest Whitaker returns to pick her up in the early stages of the story, the second towards the film's end, when the whole screen is bathed in white smoke as one character goes behind the screen that had separated people from the alien visitors up to that point. It all points to a person - and a human race - living in the half-light of partial understanding; unaware that there's a light that can be turned on until someone (or something else) does it instead.
In many respects this film tells a familiar story of alien first contact with earth, and tells it as a thoughtful drama rather than an action spectacular. Like many science-fiction stories, this is one concerned with how we as a species and as individuals understand ourselves, and how we conceive of 'the other' - whether that's people or beings different to us, or God. It's certainly the case that even on the small screen this is a film that's deeply effective in evoking a sense of wonder; it may only be just over 30 minutes in to the film when we first see the aliens, but the lighting, the camera's repeated reminding us of Amy Adams's aloneness, the sound design and the remarkable score all evoke a sense of encounter with something that is truly different, alien in every sense of the word.
Amy Adams's performance is towering; she seems to be on screen for at least 95% of the run time; for much of that time we seem to be following her from behind or looking in to her face, a face blessed with the ability to express volumes. This film was always going to stand or fall on her performance; as a result, it stands very tall indeed.
The film initially sets itself up as a struggle between science (in the shape of Jeremy Renner's character, a theoretical physicist) and language (Amy Adams); but it becomes more than that. Breakthrough in communication with the aliens is only achieved when Adams, followed by Renner, break out of the strict, rigid almost ritualistic structures laid down by science and the military; maybe it's because I'm a priest and I was watching it in Holy Week, that I saw more than a hint of a reference to the curtain in the temple, separating people from God, through which only one priest could go and which was torn in two by Jesus' crucifixion.
There's something in that, however. So often words and laboratories, religion and science, mind and heart are pitted against each other. In Arrival we see the fruit of something else; something the film calls a 'non-zero sum' game, a movement beyond linear, binary thinking in to something more fluid, more supple. If moving beyond the boundaries laid down by military and science gives humanity a breakthrough in communicating with the aliens, it's a departure from conventional 'zero sum', straight line thinking that is the key to the whole mystery and crisis that forms the heart of the film.
Like Arthur C Clarke's classic 1950s novel Childhood's End (clearly an influence on both this film and its source text), the vision of humanity presented could easily be something so optimistic and naive as to be of no use. Certainly that's where Childhood's End left me; but I felt differently on rewatching Arrival. Of course, right and wrong, truth and falsehood and many others are binaries we need - too much blurring of the lines leaves with an epidemic of uncertainty and fake news. This time around, however, I was reminded of how I characterise my own thinking as someone with ADD and two learning disabilities; not neuro-typical, I guess you would say. I say that I don't think in straight lines; I think in blobs. Then I try to string the blobs together, make connections in order to form coherent thought and output (or not ... ). Straight lines can be helpful; but I find it very difficult to follow them.
A valuing of intuitive, relational thinking can also make us a bit more humble, a little less keen to make it all about us. Especially useful when it comes to the 'other' - the other person, culture, lifestyle or God. Trying to build bridges with something or someone utterly different to us needs more than a straight line-rationale; it needs a humble willingness to take the long, winding road of presence, listening and submission. When it comes to God, it comes with the awareness that we can't build the bridge ourselves; we have to accept that all our rationality will only get us so far, and instead accept the invitation to the humble submission of walking across a bridge which we had no hand in building - and which for much of the time, we can't see the other side of, or even much more than a step or two in front of us.
Arrival, in the form of Amy Adams's portrayal of a linguistics expert learning a new of way of speaking and thinking, presents us with a humbling invitation to engagement with others and the Other; a vision which requires us to step beyond the straight lines we naturally default to, a commitment to the long and winding road of another's design. It is in the letting go that we take up, the losing that we find, the dying that we live.