Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (15 July 2018)

Arrival has an interesting premise. Aliens arrive to planet Earth in 12 different spacecrafts with a mysterious mission, and in the US (which is of course the only location that matters in this film), linguist Louise Banks is brought aboard to decipher their language. Meanwhile, Louise seems to be having increasingly intense flashbacks about her daughter who died and husband who left her.
I'm not sure if the filmmakers thought linguistics were too difficult for the audience to understand, or if they didn't really understand them either, but apart from a few key moments, the process Louise goes through to learn the aliens' language is vague and opaque. We don't know exactly how she does it, but a montage later, and suddenly she can speak to them in full sentences. How did we go from concrete, observable language (e.g. walk) to being able to communicate abstract concepts (e.g. purpose)? That part is glossed over entirely. It's still an interesting concept, and the circular way in which the aliens write holds an symbolic purpose, but it's not executed as well as it could be.
While all of this is going on, there are scenes showing world affairs in response to the aliens (called heptapods). The filmmakers made a decision to involve no real-world political figures in the movie, which was probably for the best, but still manages to be distracting. It's all "the president" this, "the president" that, and a fictional Chinese general now seems to be leader of the entire Eastern world. News segments come across as corny and forced, as does a fictional rightwing conspiracy theorist. Of course, it's the Eastern world that decides to wage war on the heptapods, those unenlightened brutes, and Louise alone has the power to stop them. This all provides the only context and main conflict of the movie, but it is rather dull and contrived.
Then there's the "flashbacks" and romance, which are interlinked. Early on, Louise is introduced to physicist Ian Donnelly, who comes across as arrogant, and the two spar a bit. Then they clearly begin to grow on one another. It's a very cliche, albeit subdued (remember, this is a serious film!), romance plot. Ian makes a throwaway line about how language informs our experience of reality (i.e., the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), which ends up being the key to the whole movie. There's also a key "flashback" in which Louise tells her daughter her father is a scientist. While it's all pretty vague, the circular nature of the aliens' language, combined with the fact that Louise has come to think in their language, starts to make it clear that these aren't "flashbacks." Ian is her husband, and their daughter dies; because Louise has been given the gift of the heptapods' language, she now sees time as they do, i.e., nonlinearly. Instead of being stuck at a point in time like all humans, she can now see every event in her life unfold. It's a confusing concept, and the film doesn't do much to clarify it.
This all is used to solve the problem with that pesky warmongering General Shang, who gives her his phone number during one of her visions and directs her on what she can say to change his mind (which makes it even more ambiguous how time works in this movie--is having a nonlinear perception of time the same thing as being clairvoyant?). Then the heptapods leave, and Louise finally understands the gift they have given to her. Is it a gift? A thoughtful audience will have more questions than answers. Louise continues on with her life, marrying Ian and giving birth to their daughter, because "it's the journey, not the destination" (as the cliche goes). She knows Ian will leave her and her daughter, and then the daughter will die from cancer at a young age. Is it really ethical to give birth to someone who will suffer and die at a young age? As deep as it wants to be, the movie doesn't trouble itself with such questions. It's also not clear if Louise has any free will to stop it--after all, the events she sees are already happening (the nonlinear view of time negates the idea of a separate past, present, and future). Does Louise have any free will at all?
Arrival is a well-made film from a technical standpoint. The cinematography and soundtrack are excellent. The plot has a lot of potential, and there are some interesting moments therein. However, in the end it doesn't add up to the sum of its parts. Its rather slow, light on detail, and the ending manages to be both predictable and confusing. The ending tries to spin Louise's "gift" as a positive, but it's hard to buy it.