ARRIVAL: 9 / The Chess Game of Art -- My Silver Knight Rating System Explained

Rating: 9/10 (2 August 2017)

Cinema is Art--a grand creative chess game costarring Form and Story. And in keeping with the metaphor of chess, I cast these costars in the role of knights: the White Knight of Form and the Black Knight of Story. When I evaluate a movie, I evaluate the performance of each knight.
But these two knights not only stand alone. On the rectangular chessboard of the silver screen, the White Knight of Form and the Black Knight of Story also partner as one unified knight, through collaborative "conflict"--"the basis of every art," as Sergei Eisenstein said in Film Form (1949). Just as opposing sides of a coin, heads and tails, partner as one unified coin.
In the Chess Game of Art, I dub this one unified knight The Silver Knight of Form & Story.
The Silver Knight of Form & Story is the Avatar of Art, which represents an ideal-- indicated by a perfect Silver Knight Rating of 10. The Silver Knight Rating reflects my restrained judgment as to how well a movie hits this mark.
And the Silver Knight Rating measures more than my intellectual perception of where a movie falls along the spectrum of artistic merit that ranges from mediocrity to mastery. The Silver Knight Rating also factors in how psychologically pleasing I find the movie, how deeply the movie impacts me emotionally . . . induces catharsis . . . inspires in me an involuntary welling up of "aesthetic emotion"*--a term coined by Clive Bell in Art (1914) that Robert McKee redefined in Story (1997) as "moments that blaze with a fusion of idea and emotion . . . the simultaneous encounter of thought and feeling." The Silver Knight Rating reflects the power of a movie's presentation of Form & Story to do what McKee says life typically can't do, but art can: unite insight and emotion.
My Silver Knight Rating of ARRIVAL:
White Knight (Form): 9
Black Knight (Story): 9
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Silver Knight (Form & Story): 9
I developed my concept of Form & Story and my chess-based terms White Knight of Form, Black Knight of Story, and Silver Knight of Form & Story in my work as a practicing architect and architectural theorist. I draw from a deep well of research into literary theory and painting to highlight the concept of chess as an analogy or metaphor for art--and a metaphor in which the chess piece of the knight plays the lead role dating to at least Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky's book Knight's Move (1923). I have written extensively about this research and the meaning of my special terms--for example, in my IMDb commentary on THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. And in my book Visual Ef9ects.
But the terms Form and Story as applied to a building do not entirely parallel these terms as applied to a movie, so when it comes to movies, here's what I mean.
Form = Quality of Production. The Aesthetics of Sight & Sound. Cinematography & Soundtrack, including musical score and sound design. The visible and audible (optical and acoustical) expression of artistic choices that also include set design and film architecture, lighting, wardrobe, visual effects, and editing . . . as well as the quality of acting and directing.
Story = Quality of Screenplay. Shakespeare or hack? Does the screenplay present a good story well told? I base my rating on how much a movie sinks below or rises above this bar. For example, does the screenplay present a bad story well told? A ho-hum story told by an amateur? A great story beautifully told, rendered by a Story Master? And of course, Story itself represents an expression of Form, a very demanding expression of Form, requiring of the Story Architect special artistic powers and command of archetypal principles to first design an excellent story and then to craft its telling into an excellent screenplay. All of which factors into the dimension of cinema that I call Story.
So for example, by way of analogy with the allied art of the stage, if Bertolt Brecht's play GALILEO benefits from an outstanding production or suffers from a poor one, then the rating for Form would go up or down. But the rating for the play itself--Story--would stay the same.
For my rating of Form, I rely on a frame of reference shaped by my study of music and acting and by my work as a visual artist, principally as a practitioner and theorist of painting and architecture.
For my rating of Story, I rely on a frame of reference shaped by my education as a screenwriter, which helps me size up the degree to which a screenplay reflects advanced and inspired application of universal principles of Story Design spelled out in books like The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler; Memo from the Story Department, by Christopher Vogler & David McKenna; Save the Cat!, by Blake Snyder; and Story, by Robert McKee.
I also factor in the degree to which Story Design measures up to what I call The Symbolic Rectangle, which I lay out in my IMDb commentary on MERU.
Bottom line, by way of analogy further afield, Does the expression of Form & Story that a movie presents have more to do with the level of amateur cycling that my nifty three-speed Brooklyn Flyer and my cycling skill set represent? Or with the level of professional cycling that we associate with the quality of bikes and skill sets of the competitors in the Tour de France?
Only movies that rank as worthy of the Tour de France, as it were, get highest Silver Knight Ratings.
Like ARRIVAL.
An expression of Form & Story summed up in one word: Exquisite.
Everything about the movie radiates creative genius--complex, deep, multi-layered, intellectually profound, and visually and aurally beautiful, building through its masterful story design to a stunning convergence of insight, exhilaration, and heartbreak. I'm one of the lucky few who saw ARRIVAL before laying eyes on the poster or knowing the genre or even the logline. Thank, God, because the IMDb logline gives away more than I'd want to know before plopping down in my seat at the theater: "A linguist is recruited by the military to communicate with alien life-forms after twelve mysterious spacecrafts land around the world." But, blissfully, the logline keeps us light-years from the heart of the story, what the story is really about. (Which I won't spoil here.) Including, thematically, what it means to be Human. Could there be a universal language of Time, which loops us continually around the circle of Life, flashing back, flashing forward, freeing us to experience boundless synchronicities of departure and arrival--on behalf of the survival and harmony of individuals and civilizations throughout our multi-dimensional universe? Can we control our destiny when we learn the universal language of Time? And what do we do when our humanity and time converge to require of us to make choices we cannot fathom making?
Just like THE INSIDER, the title of ARRIVAL has a double meaning. Two Insiders in THE INSIDER, not just Jeffrey Wigand, but also Lowell Bergman. Same with ARRIVAL. Two Arrivals in ARRIVAL--not just aliens. And like the constellation Orion in the night sky, this parallel Arrival hides in the title in plain view. If you know where to look for it, you can't miss it. And if you do miss it, the DVD special features, where Ted Chiang talks about his short story, adapted by Eric Heisserer for the screen, will give you a clue. No wonder the Academy nominated Heisserer's screenplay for Best Adapted Screenplay--it should have won.
ARRIVAL presents a stunning story, two symbolic stories woven together as one, rendered by a team of remarkable artists who give this exquisite Symbolic Story exquisite Visual Form.
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*NOTE: Robert McKee gives an ironic twist to the meaning of "aesthetic emotion." Clive Bell coined the term to defend abstract art. Aesthetics! Bell said that aesthetic emotion rises within us from the impact of the aesthetic dimension itself. Form triggers emotion! Meaning not required. In fact, Bell maintained (again, in defense of abstract art), Form is Meaning! The only "Meaning" required. No need for Meaning outside of Form or beyond the Meaning of Form itself. In my book "VISUAL EF9ECTS: Architecture and the Chess Game of Form & Story," I highlight the clash early in the 20th-century between this British Formalist viewpoint (Clive Bell) and the Russian Formalist viewpoint (Victor Shklovsky). Bell vs. Shklovsky. And for the past 100 years, in the education and practice of architecture, Clive Bell's viewpoint has had the upper hand: Form. Form. Form! Abstract Form, yes; Story, no. Aesthetics, yes; Symbolics, no. Chess Moves, yes; Chess Meaning, no. My theory and practice of architecture takes the less popular position: Yes, to all of it.
Just like the Mother of the Arts today: Motion Pictures.
Whether for the big screen or the small screen--whether feature films like ARRIVAL or open-ended narrative TV series like the 62-episode BREAKING BAD--motion pictures of surpassing quality thrill us by the magic of Visual Storytelling. The screen--cinema and TV--is the primary artistic medium of our modern world, uniquely able to spellbind us by the dynamic double-edged sword of Form & Story, possessed of emotional superpowers that bring us face to face with the truth.
Long live the Silver Knight.
© copyright 2017 by JEF7REY HILDNER