Almost Pitch Perfect sci-fi, despite a doubty sub-plot on women's choices

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2016)

THE ARRIVAL from Quebecer, Denis Villeneuve, (Oh the Gods! How we have waited for this day from the director of the stunning INCENDIES), tells a tale of seemingly environmentally attentive aliens arriving by the dozen-load on Earth. However, the arrival occurs against the backdrop of a significant communications problem - language. (What about the Star Trekking universal translator? I hear you moan. Yes. Well. Whatever.). The clear and present comprehension gap needs rapid resolution. Luckily, the brilliant (and she is here) Amy Adams is on hand as a student-less polyglot linguistic expert - Louise Banks. So, what could go wrong in any encounter between the enchanting Adams and a pair of representative seven legged beings from another planet charmingly nicknamed Abbott & Costello? Well, as someone who saw every single Abbott and Costello movie, (three times), (before the age of eight) (possibly seven), I had my early suspicions something could go awry. And it did. Only, I was expecting it to be the aliens fault (OK, I did think the good folk of Kenema, Sierra Leone, were not mentioned for nothing). As it happens, it turns the upheaval comes via the subplot and not the startlingly huge heptapods. Darn. I almost loved The Arrival. Almost. As a thinking person's sci-fi film goes, this was headed right for cerebral cortex coinage.
A gritty pacing spins the treadmill beneath the feat (feet) of this Ted Chiang ("Story of Your Life") inspired invasion, pounding along to a heart arresting soundtrack laced with stalking references to primitive rhythms, Aramaic chants and gong and grumble rumbles worthy of the resurrection of Stanley Kubrick. The science too, the basis of linguistics alone, not to mention the clever nod to Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's floating multipods in Alien design, is utterly captivating without flinging all the complexities that say Noma Chomsky could throw at you. Who knew that the roots of Portugese could be so nail- bitingly gripping? (Ok, I did! Anyhoo...). And we should offer a medal of honour to the folks in lighting and matte. It rarely looks so convincing. K-Ching!
Villeneuve has a brilliant cast on hand to draw us slavishly right into the belly of this epic encounters tale. Jeremy Renner (Hurt Locker), the brilliant Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland, Crying Game) and of course the (could-one- possibly-be-more- thesbianistically- dextrous) Amy Adams (tearing Hollywood careers apart with her performances) all join in to stamp the slightest whiff of absurdity into the muddy Montana highlands. Adams's quivering ordinariness pouts and pours tension out in such chilling spades as to harden the butter on one's popcorn. Her character (Banks) is burdened with the unenviable task of going into the alien ship to try and develop a line of communication with, possibly, the ugliest things that have never walked the face of Earth. But, if she was in any way indifferent to the simmering interplanetary Bay of Pigs looming on the horizon, then her own subplot gives her a good excuse to get aboard. As a mother who has lost her only child to an incurable disease, what has she got to lose?
Though the emotive propeller of Bank's past is an important character piece in itself, underpinning the essence of her inner feminine strengths, there comes a point at which the viewer learns that those particular strengths are conveyed as distinguishing her from other women because of the choices she has made. Ouch! Right here The Arrival lands a value judgment that is, at least, open to question. Without giving away the story-line it is important to point out that though this is a subplot, it emerges at the end of the film in a prominently delivered verdict on the choices one makes in life. Hardly an accident in a film with a 50 million dollar budget one guesstimates. Hollywood of is often accused of playing the Democrat game in US politics, but the truth is that was never the case. Actors yes, maybe, but studios - never. Here is a solid example of conservative studio bosses playing to the new audiences they must have sensed were coming over the horizon, unlike the heptapods who arrived unannounced. And it seems with one of these two sets of interlocutors the message is on target. And it is a pity that a sci-fi film should end up being a vehicle for this kind of moralising. Because, this is exactly what does not make a great sci- fi movie, despite all the other ingredients being (dare I say it?) pitch perfect.