Long... slow arrival

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2017)

Arrival was highly praised, making it one of the few movies to hit Netflix that I was actually looking forward to.
The opening scene was done really well, one of those "Up"-esc sad openings, with Amy Adams as Louise, watching her daughter grow up and then die of cancer.
Now in the present (or past) day, Louise is a language teacher, and we learn that the Earth has been invaded by aliens. We learn this by a series of news shows which were mixed to have very quiet, almost inaudible sound. Not for dramatic tension but so that the filmmaker could try to startle you by suddenly having a loud blaring horn go off.
The next half hour of the movie felt like it was being obnoxiously slow, as if to build atmosphere or something. They clearly did not learn from the failures of such films as the first Star Trek movie, that slow sci-fi is only superior in being more boring.
The aliens begin to come into view through a haze and they suddenly cut away from it as if taking pride in being its cinematic cockteasery.
The moment it cuts directly to is directly after the encounter - skipping over it, surely to beg the question "what happened"? and leading us to suspect that we will find out why everyone looks so shocked at a more dramatic time albeit in a less suspenseful way.
But instead the story just continues on. To me this took away some of the drama because all of the people acting traumatized by this experience were not behaving in a way I could relate to considering that the film is assuming that they experienced pretty much exactly what the audience did.
The next scene was a bit of a head-scratcher for me too... Having not been able to begin a verbal dialogue with the aliens, Louise decides that the next logical step is to have what she calls a "visual aid" by showing it the written word "Human". To me, she as a human being would be a better "visual aid" than the written word. But I guess I was wrong because this prompts the alien to start creating text of its own. How stupid must all these smart people have felt when all they had to do was show the aliens an English word they had no way of understanding.
Now that they have finally opened the lines of communication, this logically leads to the Colonel being angry at Louise for reasons that don't really make sense, but it allows her to go on a speech about kangaroos.
The scenes that follow are somewhat interesting as they try to learn to communicate, but it gets old pretty fast; it reminded me of the Legend of Graystoke and being bored to tears with watching Tarzan learn English. I wanted to see him swinging through trees, and in Arrival - a story about an alien invasion - I wanted to see something actually happen.
It becomes very clear that the author has a great interest in language and communication, and in the narration explaining the language the film is at its best. Unfortunately, the film slides into the all too predictable "race against time" cliché.
The aliens send a message that translates to "weapon" which apparently the Chinese have also learned to decipher - probably written in to add to the race against time, but instead it sort of renders all of the scenes where Louise was learning the language virtually pointless since apparently several others have done the exact same thing.
With about half an hour left in the movie I had figured out where the story was going. It's interesting but it probably wouldn't have been as predictable if it wasn't so DAMN SLOW PACED! Suffice it to say there is a kind of odd twist that was another interesting idea, but because of the way they did it, it feels like less of a twist than having the rug pulled out from under us, because there was clearly information that was being sneakily hid from us unnecessarily, leading to the necessary lack of character development.
But then comes the worst part yet... something that I'm afraid requires some spoilers...
She learns vital information by seeing into the future to a time when she already knew the information. This kind of circular story- telling is one of the laziest kinds!
Now I did like the fact that the theme of non-linear time was reinforced by the structure of the film. What I don't like is that the flashes of the future come at seemingly random times and is unclear about what brings them on - nor does it explain how she was suddenly able to phone a Chinese cell phone when we were told that all global communication systems were down.
I'm sorry of this is a "spoiler" but the way they hid the all too obvious revelation of who Hannah's father was was almost insulting.
Anyway, the film is an interesting attempt but is in many ways lost potential.