Masterpiece in science fiction

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2016)

The film begins with linguist Louise Banks caring for her daughter Hannah, who dies during adolescence from cancer.
While Louise is at work lecturing, twelve extraterrestrial spacecraft appear across the Earth. She is asked by US Army Colonel Weber to join a team, with physicist Ian Donnelly, to find out why they have come. They make contact with two seven-limbed aliens, which they call "heptapods" and Ian nicknames Abbott and Costello. Louise discovers that the aliens have a written language of complicated circular symbols, and she begins to learn the symbols that correspond to a basic vocabulary. As she becomes more proficient, she starts to see and dream images of herself with her daughter.
When Louise is able to ask what the aliens want, they answer: "offer weapon". A similar translation "use weapon" is received by one of the other sites. Fear of a potential threat from the aliens leads other nations to close down communications, and some prepare their military for attack. However, Louise thinks that the symbol for "weapon" might have an alternative translation such as "tool".
Some rogue soldiers plant explosives in the spacecraft. Unaware, Louise and Ian return, and the aliens give them a larger image with lots of language symbols. Costello leaves just before the device explodes, but Abbott stays and pushes Louise and Ian out of the chamber; they both wake up in the camp with concussion. The spacecraft moves away higher into the sky.
Ian works out that the symbols relate to the concept of time, and that it was one twelfth of the whole "gift"; they conclude that the aliens must want nations to co-operate.