The cerebral has landed

Rating: 10/10 (10 November 2016)

I watched Arrival on its first showing tonight here in the UK. I had been attracted by the buzz around the movie -- and I was not disappointed. I found it a challenging and absorbing piece of work, an intelligent speculation on the time-honoured sci-fi theme of what happens when 'they' finally land.
Linguistics expert Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is recruited to establish communication with the aliens, joined by mathematician Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). They are driven out to Montana (played here by Quebec) where a huge alien craft, one of 12 to have arrived at various locations around the globe, hangs massively above the ground. Every 18 hours a portal opens in the base of the craft, allowing access within.
Two giant, squid-like 'heptapods' -- irreverently nicknamed Abbot and Costello by Donnelly -- can be glimpsed behind a large, translucent barrier. In an effective visual trick, the barrier is the same size and aspect ratio as a cinema screen, so you find yourself looking beyond the screen into a kind of cinematic second world -- a screen beyond the screen, in fact, where here be monsters.
The aliens communicate by forming mysterious, smoky glyphs that obviously mean something -- but what? Dr Banks is under pressure from the military, represented by Col Weber (Forest Whitaker) to determine the visitors' intentions. Gradually she assembles a vocabulary and begins to comprehend their language. Meanwhile international tensions grow as the superpowers race to read the aliens' mysterious messages, jockeying to gain military or scientific advantage over their rivals.
There are tensions, too, in the internal dialogue of the movie's main character, Dr Banks, played by Adams with a kind of steely, intelligent vulnerability -- an award-deserving performance that is never anything less than completely convincing. Dr Banks is troubled by visions of a daughter who died young. It is natural to assume that the daughter scenes are flashbacks -- but beware of assumptions. The narrative plays with time. Renner's wise-cracking, caring, crumpled support strikes exactly the right note.
Bradford Young's cinematography is muted, the story played out under lowering grey skies and within the dark confines of the alien craft, while director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario) keeps the pace moderate but relentless. The film is a builder without a wasted shot. The dialogue is spare verging on staccato, wasting no words on excessive exposition, the writing credits going to Eric Heisserer (screenplay) and Ted Chiang, who wrote the original story. Johann Johannsson's score is consistently compelling and occasionally sublime.
Arrival demands close attention. This is no dizzying CGI-fest of space cadets saving the world. The mood is serious, the theme grown- up, the narrative cerebral. Humanity is held up against the mirror of an overwhelming -- and manifestly technologically superior -- alien presence. Villeneuve treats his genre and his audience with respect. His film deserves the same.