Arrival is a conceptual aloha

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2016)

Arrival is an enigma that succeeds in introducing the audience to not just a different world view but a fundamentally different notion of experiencing time. To some the notion that one word could be used for both hello and goodbye is a bridge too far. The notion that one can dislodge ones perceptual anchor that delineates and orders past, present, and future is beyond startling. The idea that one could learn to exist on both sides of a perceptual interface and tease out the basis for communication is even more extraordinary.
In many ways this film, ostensibly about how one species can learn to communicate with another, speaks to us as much if not more about how we learn to communicate with ourselves. How we choose to endow things with meaning. How we choose to care. How we choose to love. This is a great movie to take a friend you love to.