well worth watching

Rating: 7/10 (27 September 2017)

This is a well-made and well-acted science fiction movie. There is much to admire, such as a thoughtful plot, a careful construction and fine visual and special effects : the aliens, for instance, are genuinely alien, as is the environment they live in. There is also an intelligent and competent heroine, although one can question the wisdom of some of her choices.
Still, "Arrival" tends to sidestep or neglect the moral and ethical questions it raises itself. The aliens bring a gift to humanity - but what if this gift turns out to be a curse of Biblical proportions ? What if the aliens have unleashed a terrible blight ? I, for one, would not be pleased to be on the receiving end ; moreover, I can't even begin to grasp the scale of the mayhem released on humanity if the gift became general. It's entirely possible that homo sapiens might disappear from the face of the planet in a few generations, crushed by a weight it was never meant to bear. Or else, for instance, we might find ourselves in a world in which the stupid, the callous and the evil reach a ripe old age, while the clever, the sensitive and the good commit suicide before adulthood.
Ironically, there is much to be said for the argument that it would have been wise to blast the aliens to kingdom come, as soon as their ships became visible.