Just remember this is science fiction

Rating: 7/10 (13 May 2017)

For a generation who has probably never even heard of Fellini or Antonioni, this could well be a confusing or boring film. For those who find it appealing, do try to read the original story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang.
Flashbacks have become common practice in movie making. Admittedly, flashbacks sometimes made a film, but the technique has been over- used in the last decade in attempts to elevate the "artistic" element in movie making. In "Arrvial", such segments are in fact not flashbacks per se. One of the key idea in the movie (as well as the short story it was based upon) is about our own conception of time (and time "travel", into the future). The most significant verbal interchange in the entire movie occurred early in the movie, between the characters played by Renner and Adams, that brought up the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis, that language could potentially be what constrains our thoughts, and thus our intellectual, psychological, and sociological endeavours.
Ted Chiang, as I remember vaguely, has written elsewhere about the possibility of a language which is deterministic, in the sense that the first "word" uttered could determine the entire "sentence" to come. I think he was drawing on certain logographic/pictorial language that tells an entire story with one "picture" - in the film, they made an attempt to portray how they decipher the alien language, showing the "translated" English words around the alien symbols. (Notice also that the aliens did not trace/draw those symbols in a sequential fashion, the entire symbols somehow resolved from some "random" swirl of ink, and when Adams tried to mimic the symbol, she said she couldn't do it using both hands - because she was conditioned to a sequential mode of language processing.) I think Chiang's original idea, which the movie also attempted to capture, was the notion of a nonlinear dimension of time, which hinted at the aliens' ability to somehow "forsee" the future - they told Adams that they were trying to help humans now so that we humans can in turn help them when they will be in trouble in a few thousands years.
Adams, having been initiated into the alien language, no longer perceived time in a linear fashion, hence all the apparent flashbacks, which were merely snippets of her consciousness which were no longer bound by the normal progression of time. In Chiang's short story, Adams was writing/telling the story of her child's life (before it was born) when the future was already "known" to her, which hearkens back to what she said in the movie about "...despite knowing the journey... and where it leads... I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it."
All in all, I think this is a well-made movie, with some novel ideas (for a change). Amy Adams did a great job portraying the protagonist - it WAS her movie. Jeremy Renner was believable in a supporting role. The bit about non-zero-sum game and international cooperation is a welcome message in today's polarizing world politics and religious fanaticism. One could also surmise the fact that Adam's character was "blessed" with the "gift(weapon)" of the alien's language was due to her willingness to approach them, first by taking off her protective suit, and subsequently in running out to the alien ship when the evacuation order was issued - here is a faint echo of Chiang's notion that an initial gesture (word) can determine the course/outcome of an entire interaction (sentence), from the start.
A final word for those who voted thumbs down outright: our ability (including my own) to comprehend this movie, or the original story of Chiang, might well be tempered by our own individual linguistic idiosyncrasies. A movie to be watched more than once.