‘Arrival’ Venice Review: Amy Adams Talks to the Aliens in Cerebral Sci-Fi Story
Denis Villeneuve‘s tale of humanity’s first contact with ETs wants to appeal to both the heart and the head, but it succeeds mostly above the...
At the climax of Alan Moore’s acclaimed graphic novel “Watchmen,” a billionaire scientist fakes an alien invasion of earth as a way to end U.S./Soviet aggression and to force the fractious nations of our planet to unite against a common foe.
Not that this is a cynical movie, mind you; like last year’s “The Martian,” it’s about smart, driven people using their know-how to solve seemingly insurmountable problems and to answer the toughest questions.
[...] while that film injected humor into the mix, “Arrival” is a fairly chilly, cerebral bit of business, from its beautifully tamped-down cinematography (by modern master Bradford Young) to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ethereal score.
Playing ferociously intelligent characters is nothing new for Adams (say what you will about the recent Superman movies, she plays Lois Lane as a better investigative reporter than any of her predecessors), and she brings a wonderful sense of curiosity as a linguist faced with the challenge of translating a species that creates sentences (that look like circles) out of gas that comes out of tentacles.
Earth’s panic and differing points of view about how to deal with the aliens operate mainly in the background here, and the screenplay by Eric Heisserer (“Lights Out”), adapting a short story by Ted Chiang, balances the intricacies of how the military would address this situation (and how much they will and won’t share their findings with other world powers) and how the media and the population at large would respond.
Louise’s personal story is a powerful one, and the film never betrays this fascinating character, but it has so successfully created such a cool and detached vibe that it’s a bit jarring to get a last-minute play for the emotions.
For what it’s worth, the movie does play personal concerns against intergalactic ones with more grace than “Interstellar” managed to do.