I was desperately looking for a "departure" sign.

Rating: 2/10 (4 December 2016)

This review contains: +++++SPOILERS+++++
When I left the cinema I was wondering: How on earth did this movie get approved by a production company (opening credits say there were four of them involved). How was the meeting like? How would you pitch this film to a producer and point out the interesting or unique aspects of it. Because it simply does not have any! The film starts with a very short sequence which introduces our main character (had to look up her name) "Louise" (Amy Adams). We see her and her daughter. Shortly we learn that her daughter has a serious disease and is dying. It happens way to fast. You CAN NOT relate to these characters so fast, so the death of the girl did not really bother anyone in the audience. Then we get to the present time and "Louise" is a professor at a university and sees on the news that alien ships have landed on planet earth. We learn that she is an expert in linguistics and therefore can help the military to decode the alien language (firstly audio recordings, then written signs). The Colonel who wants to hire her for the job (Forest Withaker) seems to be pretty dumb because he does not understand that she cannot translate an alien language by just listening to ONE recording of an alien conversation. That one made me almost laugh.
She tells him that she needs to be on one of these alien ships to make a first contact. So they fly her to this one alien ship and on board of the helicopter there is "Ian" (Jeremy Renner). They now work together as a team and go aboard the alien vessel. The most interesting part about this is how they try to communicate with the aliens (or Cthulus. They have tentacles!). This leads to very interesting questions: How do you set up a basic communication system? What are the challenges and mistakes one can make? So they learn the sign language of the aliens and try out different methods of communicating. As I mentioned before this is actually the most interesting part about this movie. This movie wants to be so many things. An artsy independent film (Budget is 45 million dollars, so it is not too expensive). The images do remind me of "The Tree of Life". They tried to imitate that cinematography. Especially the "red haired mother plays with her daughter in the sunlight" scenes. But as a matter of fact the images you get to see are just okay. Nothing special here but also not too bad. The movie also wants to be a different "Alien contact" film. The problem here is: They make the same usual mistakes. They get you excited and curious. They want you to ask questions about the aliens: What do they want? Are they evil or good? How do they look like? and so on. But sadly you only get just a slight hint or just no answer at all. And this is pretty unsatisfying.
But you might say: "WAIT, fellow critic. This movie is NOT about the aliens. It is about the characters." Well yes that's what they intended to do But then I gotta ask: If the characters were so important why do they only focus on their story line in the last third of the movie? They build up everything around the alien topic and then suddenly it does not matter anymore and it is all about the main character and her +++SPOILER++ ability to see the future of her own life because she has now learned the alien language. This obviously leads to "plot-hole city" discussions, because she wants to teach this alien language to every human being (the reason for that involves the aliens that want to come back to humanity in 3000 years which leads to another plot-hole because you ask yourself: why didn't you come 10 years before that date. But hey its still alien logic).
And now to the big "twist" at the end: We have never seen her husband in these flashbacks that she has during the movie. Thats why I guessed that the science guy "Ian" would be the husband. Which is the case. It means that the sequence with her dying daughter at the beginning is actually showing us their future. "Ian" left her because she told him that she knew that their daughter would get this disease. He could not live with the fact that he knows what his daughter will be going through and still look at her like "You are all good. Not close to death at all." That's the only time I had felt a connection to his character. I could understand why he went away. Other than that he is (like the whole movie) a pretty flat character that no one really cares about. "Louise" does not seem to have a problem with accepting her future and her daughters fate. This felt really cruel and weird to me. I would at least try to change my future or find a cure for the daughter.
This film wants to be a different and artsy-indie movie but fails to achieve that. The characters lack depth, the message at the end basically is "would you live your life exactly as planned even if you knew that your future would be negative?". This is not a really deep, life changing message (even if some enthusiastic user reviews tell you the complete opposite and are crazy enough to compare this movie with masterpieces like "2001" and so on). In the end I just can say that I have a "meh" feeling for this movie. It is not good, but it is also not really bad. There is nothing (beside some set design things) that I would call "worthy to remember" or special.