"Life's a journey, not a destination."

Rating: Null/10 (4 May 2017)

We watched this at home on DVD from our public library.
This movie is a distinct departure from most Sci-Fi movies. There is very little action, it moves rather slowly most of the time, and is mostly a study of relationships in the broadest term.
With no fanfare and no warning 12 mysterious, elongated vessels appear around the world, one of them in remote Montana. They are said to be about 1500 feet tall and hover a few feet above the ground, with no detectable energy or waste. Certainly alien craft, what are they here for?
Each country approaches each of the 12 independently, trying to figure out how to communicate with them, yet eventually they cease to cooperate, to share their progress. For the one in Montana Amy Adams as linguistics professor Louise Banks is recruited to help. As well as Jeremy Renner as Mathematician Ian Donnelly. The military official in charge of the approach and investigate operation is old reliable Forest Whitaker as taskmaster Colonel Weber.
The mysterious vessel apparently opens a door at a certain time each day, allowing a team dressed in full biosafe gear to enter into an anti-gravity chamber. They bring along a Canary, as long as it tweets then they are assured they are safe. They try to communicate with the Heptapods, separated from their hazy enclosure by some sort of transparent, glass-like barrier.
So what the story is about concerns how we communicate with each other and try to communicate with others, in this extreme case aliens who draw circles with features. Eventually it is interpreted that they are here to share a gift, and that involves overcoming the barriers of time.
In a sense the overriding theme of the story is "Life's a journey, not a destination." Throughout we witness Louise's flashbacks, of a husband, a young daughter, but in the end we realize that it was a preview of what was to happen. Her thoughts transcending time.
So, did we enjoy the movie? Yes, we did, as always Amy Adams is great and the story is interesting. We don't view it with the high reverence that many do, while it uses rather creative ideas in the end it is all fiction and has no lasting implication, except maybe to be more diligent in respecting others and communicating well. But most of us already perceive that without seeing it in a movie.