So far critics have been sharing their takes on Arrival out of its premieres at Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and Fantastic Fest. Now it’s my turn to share my perspective after the Beyond Fest screening of Arrival. It’s funny, had I been at one of those film festivals this year I might have skipped a big studio movie with distribution in place. I didn’t know that Arrival spoke directly to my thought process. With this Beyond Fest opportunity, Arrival lands in my top three films of 2016.
Jeremy Renner in Arrival
When 12 alien ships arrive in 12 different countries, the American military recruits linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to help them communicate with the visitors. Banks and scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) lead the American communication efforts with two heptapods, creatures with seven tentacles who only communicate with sound and symbols.
Arrival flat out suggests new ways to think. It suggests taking apart data piece by piece, from the very components of the questions you ask, interpreting the data obtained by alternate methods and incorporating them into your own. Yet intellectualizing about these concepts is insufficient to the vast scope of their potential, so dramatizing them with a captivating story about an admirable protagonist in a fantastic position at the heart of a wonderful situation could actually make the world a better place.
Louise faces a logic problem. How does she open communication with our heptapods, and even if she is successful, how does she convince the other 11 teams of scientists working to solve the same puzzle with different methods and perspectives? They don’t all have a Louise Banks promoting bigger picture thinking. Some countries get aggressive.
Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner in Arrival
Arrival outlines how we approach a macro problem like this and why we can’t rush it. Basically, Louise demonstrates linguistics from the ground up when we don’t share any words, or even any basis of format, with the other party. You can’t ask a question before you’ve established what the words “what” and “you” mean, because the answer you get could be to a wildly different question.
Each development in the story adds a new layer to the complex problem. It’s like the story of the frog swimming in slowly boiling water. Suddenly Arrival is really intense but it got there gradually by introducing factors in the story one at a time. This is clearly applicable to our world. We are dealing with problems that got to the boiling point. It would be beneficial to go back to the beginning factors before we try to address the current questions.
Part of the skill of Eric Heisserer’s screenplay and Denis Villeneuve’s direction is the way they visualized random abstract through processes. Part of the complexity is understanding how other teams approached the same situation differently, and why their determinations weren’t exactly conclusive. It involves a precarious balance of certitude and humility on Louise’s part, but her character and Adams’ performance nails it.
Louise’s patience is admirable from the outset. She gets the job by waiting for the military to realize their second choice is unqualified, but she doesn’t make a case for herself. She just awaits her colleague (offscreen) proving himself inadequate. When she makes genuine progress with the heptapods, instead of celebrating she has to deal with naysayers. Here too she displays admirable problem solving, avoiding telling them they’re wrong but thinking of ways to demonstrate her concepts to people who understandably don’t think on her level. Not everyone can have linguistics degrees or be open to abstract thought. It’s not a condemnation. They have a say too and we have to find compassionate ways to work together.
Even if heptapods are not real, we can all strive to think bigger. Just like with The Martian, we don’t really have a lost astronaut on Mars, or anyone there yet, but the principals of problem solving apply to us now. Arrival is the next level. If we can process the complex thinking on display in Arrival, reaching across the aisle in political disagreements should be easy.
