Arrival (4/5 Stars)

The screenplay for Arrival was written by Eric Heisserer adapted from the book “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. Arrival is one of those movies where you get on IMDB and look up the name of the writer. Eric Heisserer past resume would not make him a likely suspect for “Arrival” one of the most intelligent movies in theaters today. He is a horror remake/sequel movie writer. His credits include “The Thing” (2011), “Final Destination 5” (2011), and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (2010). I guess he had to do what he had to do to get his foot in the door.

“Arrival” is several leagues away from these previous movies. The basic premise, an alien visitation (or is it an invasion?) has been done a thousand times but “Arrival” is something entirely different. It isn’t about humans battling angry alien instincts. At its core, “Arrival” is a movie about linguistics. It mainly concerns a linguist named Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) and her efforts to communicate with the aliens (referred to as heptapods, and two specifically called “Abbot & Costello”). If there is a movie that “Arrival” is like, I suggest it would be Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” another smart movie that went out of its way to demonstrate scientific principles to the audience. To watch “Arrival” is to learn something about how your brain processes language. At the same time, there is much humor and a good deal of suspense. “Arrival” is one of the best written movies of the year.

What “Arrival” isn’t is a particularly good looking film. This is more noticeable than usual because Director Denis Villeneuve’s last two films (Prisoners and Sicario) were very beautiful movies. It just so happens that the cinematographer, the great Roger Deakins, worked on the last two but not on “Arrival.” So if you want a good idea of the value a great cinematographer brings to the screen, compare and contrast these movies. Looking at IMDB I am very glad to discover these two will be working together again for the new Blade Runner movie. That movie should be incredible, at least to look at.

The aliens land in strange ships on thirteen (give or take) parts of the globe. A major concern of the movie is the various ways that different countries respond to the aliens. (Get it, the lack of unified culture and language plays out importantly in this way too.) Because it is vogue in this particular decade (as opposed to say the Japanese in the 1980s), the Chinese have a big role in the unfolding of the plot. On the American side, the military led by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlberg) seek out two experts, one a mathematician named Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and the linguist Louise Banks (again Amy Adams). It is unmistakable that Louise Banks being the only woman in a sea of military men in this movie is not mutually exclusive to her being also the main advocate for a peaceful response. Storywise it also helps for exposition purposes because she continually has to persuade all the dudes to give her more time to figure out the Alien language so she can figure out why the Aliens came. By doing so, she explains her procedure to us, and it is enlightening and entertaining. The mathematician is generally supportive. The military men are generally not supportive but, of course, they have a Columbus and the Native Americans situation on their minds.

The story of the aliens is interspersed with a subplot about the life and death of Amy Adams’ daughter. Why and how it is being shown in the movie is one of the more interesting devices the movie uses to explain how language affects the mind. I’m not about to give it away too much except to level a general appreciation of the song used: “The Swimmer” by Max Richter (This is the same violin Martin Scorsese used in that sad and gorgeous scene in “Shutter Island”) and again to note that like “Interstellar” the movie uses Time to provide a very optimistic dues ex machina.

p.s. The Sanskrit word for "War" and its translation is 'gavisti' and it means either 'a disagreement' or 'a desire for more cows.'