A movie for language nerds, by language nerds. Non-nerds who think should enjoy, too.

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2017)

The movie opens with a university linguistics professor having some apparent dream sequences, followed by her arrival to teach an unusually thinly-attended History of Romance Languages class. We quickly learn that her language abilities range much wider, from South Asian languages to those of China (though there were snickers heard in the largely Cantonese-And-Mandarin- speaking audience I was with). What she gets pulled into is, of course, farther-ranging still.
At the very start of the movie, it's strongly implied that the professor, Dr Louise Banks, has never been married, and conversation with the other lead character, Dr Ian Donnelly, self-deprecatingly furthers the impression. Yet a major theme of the movie is grief over loss; we see her daughter grow up and die from a rare disease as a young woman; the experience drives Dr Banks and her husband apart. The grief is searingly portrayed; it is impossible to witness it without taking it as an authentic and major part of the character's life history. It shapes Dr Banks in very real, important ways that are essential to her character's actions and motivations in the movie. To dismiss Hannah as "dream sequences" is disrespect bordering on sacrilege.
Did any reviews you've read mention that the aliens think very differently than we do, and that their language, their entire basis for reasoning is based on their seeing time very differently than we do? This is another key to the story, for the clues dropped throughout the film, for the aliens' being very much in the here-and-now while having a very *different* concept of the meaning of "now".
I read linguistics at university, and one of my favourite professors started every lecture (reportedly over his entire career with the declaration that "a *language* is the *definition* of a specific *culture*, at a specific *place*, at a specific *time.* Change the culture, the place, or the time, and the language *must* change; *when* the language changes, that is *irrefutable proof* that at least one of the others has as well." (His emphasis.) Stick *that* in your pipe and smoke it while you're watching this, along with the question of the natures of time and of perception, and of how people in power have historically reacted to things they don't understand and aren't in control of.
The climax is a bit of a deus ex machina, and there are a few questions any hard-SF fan will quibble over, but this WILL blow your mind if you let it. Do see the film, and ponder.