“Arrival” is the new film from director Denis Villeneuve about a linguistics officer who is tasked with communicating with aliens on a UFO that randomly appear on Earth. And despite 2016 being a year that has continually disappointed me in regards to the overall quality of films, this film stands out from the rest as an exceptional piece of intellectual and engaging filmmaking.
“Arrival” stars a powerful cast of Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker as the primary characters working on creating a dialogue between humans and the newly arrived aliens. While Renner and Whitaker’s roles don’t exactly give them much substance to display their acting quality, they still give stabilizing performances that help to enhance Adams, who gives one of the best performances of her career alongside her performances in “The Fighter” and “American Hustle.”
Adams is the center force for most of the film, and her calm and calculated performance continually adds an element of intrigue, but helps make the twist ending even more surprising as the audience realizes they don’t know as much about the main character as they previous thought. Adams never falters throughout the film and is just as confident as her director in guiding this film to the masterpiece status that it surely deserves.
Outside of the wonderful lead acting performance, this film is a must-see exhilarating adventure that wondrously combines stunning cinematography, assured direction, and an unconventionally intelligent storyline to create a cinematic work that almost bears no comparison. Going into this film I thought it would be an effects driven whirlwind of action. But we are given something completely different.
This film is intelligent in the way that it expresses the intricate complexities of language as a means that connects all people together and relies on this intelligence to keep the audience’s attention rather than using an array of special effects explosions. The effects that are present in this film are still of a very high quality, but the overall narrative structure of the film are what really makes this one of the more engaging sci-fi films of recent years.
The story is as smart as it makes its main characters as it keeps you completely unaware of what the ending might be and progresses the relationship between the aliens and humans in dazzling fashion. It even provides timely commentary about the need for universal cooperation in a potential crisis moment.
But the somewhat preachy nature of this analysis of international cooperation does come off as pretentious, it still doesn’t cause enough harm to take away from the overall quality of the film and the lasting effect the not only the ending, but the entire storyline have on the viewer even days after leaving the theater. This is a film that sticks in the mind because it makes the audience think in ways that they are rarely used to doing so after seeing most Hollywood produced films.
As it stands, this is the best film I’ve seen this year and should be able to retain a spot in the top ten at the very least come New Year’s Day. Its ability to make you want to talk about it for hours after leaving the theater is a testament to just how underrated movies of this stature can be, and hopefully this kick starts a trend of better quality films for the rest of 2016.
