ARRIVAL - Movie Review

Arrival. A film starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner who portray characters investigating in the translation of languages spoken by a foreign species that have arrived on Earth. Not your typical alien film I must admit but certainly one of peace and understanding between human kind and aliens. Throughout the film, we are given these flashbacks by Amy Adams' character 'Louise' who is a language teacher and historian at a University somewhere in America. These flashbacks are memories of her and her daughter having fun and playing at the start but as we carry on through the film we understand that she is diagnosed with a rare "unstoppable" disease. Later in the film the daughter dies and is lying in a hospital bed when Lousie says "come back to me" which she had said previously in the film to her as well. 

After the start of the film where the aliens arrive and people across the globe are all panicking and buying crucial supplies in order to avoid going out and staying in trying to survive, the army comes to Louise in her office and show her a recording of an attempt to communicate with the aliens. The alien replies with a noise that is incomprehensible and is clearly on an Earthly language. Louise asks the army if she could personally speak with the aliens and the general who came to her said no. This left Louise confused and with an unresolved problem that clearly she was scared by the fact that there are aliens and they are here. 

12 Shell-like ships are scattered across the globe. The one in China, Shanghai is causing panic and the Chinese president wants to destroy the ship. All world leaders come together to a FaceTime-like group chat to discuss what to do. All of these countries are going into the ship and talking to the aliens and they are responding with artistic circles on a white glass screen using some kind of black smoke to create the writing they use. Everyone has a translator from these certain countries except the US. So what they do is they hire Louise to come and work with them to try and translate their language. 

Her progress is good and they get closer and closer each day they go up into the alien ships. Along the way she meets Jeremy Renner's character called Ian who is a mathematician in the army. Louise and Ian become great friends as they discover this extraterrestrial language. We later learn that the army is becoming impatient and want answers but Louise and Ian are doing their very best to understand and translate it. As they army are becoming impatient the Chinese are too and the grow tired of patience and they attack the alien ship with guns, missiles, and all sorts. This angers the aliens and they take off into the air meaning that all the human work left up in the ship was ruptured by the change in force inside the ship through gravity when it took off.

After this when the ship is half a mile up in the air they send a pod down and Louis gets inside. The pod takes her back up to the ship and then she enters a misty, white room with no gravity but she can still breathe. The aliens come to her inside the room and ask her why the humans did what they did. She said that the Chinese are sorry and that they didn't"t mean it, but the aliens don't budge and are still annoyed. As she apologizes more and more they begin to listen where they reply with the artistic circles again which is their writing. They tell Louise that she has these power and that they want to help human king as their own species will be in trouble in 3000 years. They also said how they wanted to have a 'you help me, we help you' agreement for this time. Anyway, the powers that they said she had were that she could see the future. So this means that the flashbacks to when she was with her child were the future. 

Later on, when she comes back down to Earth again the aliens go up and leave. When she comes down, however, she is in shock and Ian puts a towel around her. Everyone has gathered a the end as they watch the aliens leave and Louise says "If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?" to which Ian replied with "No". 

So as the aliens leave, Louise is asked by Ian is she wants to have a baby to which she replied with "Yes". This is the start of the film so the title of the film 'ARRIVAL" Is about her baby and also about the aliens. This ending makes this film nonlinear. 

Overall I didn't really enjoy this movie when I came out of the room but now I've had time to think about it, it was actually alright. I like how the film was nonlinear, which is how my favourite director Quentin Tarantino makes his movies, Eg. Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. I love both of those movies so in a sense that kind of makes me like ARRIVAL.