How Arrival completes a circle

Rating: 10/10 (27 November 2016)

Dennis Villeneuve steps away from darkness for one hell of a ride into the light.
In most of the work we know him for, the Canadian-born director uses the worst that surrounds us to tell the story of a world beyond repair. The human desire for revenge in Prisoners or the corrupt underbelly of law presented to us in Sicario to name only two. Yet the minute it begins, we feel Arrival is going to be told through the paradigm of love.
So why did he choose to attack things with a different perspective this time? Why forsake what you know so well and risk engulfing yourself in a game you don't seem to know the rules of? The answers are there. The key is to listen.
Arrival's main focus is communication. When Amy Adams' language expert Louise is assigned the gargantuan task of translating an alien species, collaboration seems not only necessary, but impossible to avoid. Not one, but twelve alien vessels have arrived in as many distinctive places on earth. Teams of scientists and linguists alike join forces to uncover their intentions. Ranging in both geographical and political climates, the need to put their differences aside is inferred with astute meaning.
Denis Villeneuve has a knack for making metaphor clear as day. His movies do not only tell stories we can connect to emotionally. He also possesses an effortless ability to make us understand their symbolism, like no other.
When her colleague, the astrophysicist Ian, played by Jeremy Renner observes that she uses mathematical formulas to uncover the mysteries of heptatod (the alien language), we notice a bridging of the ever present gap between the creative, and the analytical. Two entirely different worlds collide to give birth to a new and necessary understanding.
It is here that we find the answer.
No amount of the same is going to produce different results, to paraphrase Einstein. No body of work can shine unless it is scrutinized by itself. And what better way to do that than flip it on its head? By tuning in to another voice, Villeneuve proposes we have the cure for the cancer that is our world.
However, assuming the worst is what people do best, and traces of it are also present here. We are certain the aliens are out to get us, and will sometimes stop at nothing to prove so. Using language as weapon seems to be one of our "strengths".
To communicate wholly with others is to first be able to communicate to ourselves. The portrayal of this process takes place through vignettes that show Louise' life "before" the arrival. She first has to mend the broken pieces that she did not know were there. Only then can she save us from ourselves.
By pitting Arrival against his best opus up until now, Denis Villeneuve created something bigger than himself. He manages to question everything he has ever believed in before and make us find hope in the process. After I've left the theater that evening I've often asked myself: whom else who thinks different than me have I shut out, and lost a world of treasure because of that?