REVIEW: Arrival (2016)

Language is a fundamental concept to the human race. It may not be entirely unique to our species, but it is a feature that distinguishes nearly every facet of our lives and civilization. As messy as translation can be, the proper amount of work and training can bridge nearly any language barrier on Earth. But what happens when the barrier that must be crossed is not from Earth?

Arrival tells the story of a linguist (Amy Adams) and a physicist (Jeremy Renner) who are contacted by an Army colonel (Forrest Whittaker) to make First Contact with an alien race that has landed spaceships around the world. As they slowly decipher the species' mysterious written language, Adams and Renner become more and more enraptured by the visitors while tension and fear of the extraterrestrials’ motives grows among the general population and the world’s military leaders.

The acting, as expected with a cast of this caliber, is strong, but the most exceptional aspect of Arrival is the narrative. This film is a mix of two genres, science fiction and mystery, and it’s execution of these factors is fantastic.

The aliens are among the most unique and fascinating extra-terrestrials to be seen on the big screen in quite some time. Unlike most movie aliens, the mystery doesn’t come from not seeing them, rather, the suspense comes from getting to know them and understanding their language and thinking process. It’s a unique and clever take on the alien invasion sub-genre that has rarely been seen in mainstream sci-fi.

Usually in fiction, the protagonists simply destroy the aliens (i.e. Independence Day, War of the Worlds, Aliens), or interact with them nonviolently and have at least a minimal understanding of how to communicate with them (District 9, Star Trek, Alien Nation). The concept of first contact, or at least one that doesn’t involve immediate hostilities, is extremely rare in media based on extraterrestrials.

The closest comparison to this film one can envision is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but the comparison lies solely in the first contact premise, as the execution of the two films could not be more different. Close Encounters builds its entire plot-line around the fact that the aliens have come to Earth for benign, yet incomprehensible reasons.  They affect the human psyche and rock civilization to its core, but the heroes don’t understand them or their intentions. The aliens are as strange as there are beautiful. They may frighten humanity and upend all that they thought important, and humans will never understand why, but in the end, that’s okay.

By contrast, Arrival is about understanding, a complete and total understanding to be precise. The aliens’ want is every bit as wondrous and frightening, but they have much clearer goals in mind for the human race. Without spoiling the ending, the aliens show humanity the deepest meaning behind all language. Language, spoken and unspoken, truly is all that there is to us; it’s how we make sense of the entire universe and how we convey every single thought or feeling in our lives. Arrival reflects that sort of infinite complexity brilliantly, not just telling the protagonists what language can capture, but all the things it can’t.

Review by: Zak Kizer