Arrival (2017) tackles the difficult subject of realistically deciphering the script of aliens who suddenly appear in our skies. Depicted against the background of a world that is undergoing a collective nervous breakdown, and military leaders who are increasingly panicky, the American team battles fatigue, pressure, and what seems to be incipient madness of both themselves and their military escort while desperately learning a script with no connection to any Earthly script, which has facets to it never seen before.
The steps they have to take seem what might happen in reality, and they are only lightly touched on, as they are only faintly related to drama. This approach to solving the problem – without a Rosetta Stone – seems both reasonable and difficult to perform, but lends a good touch of reality to the entire performance.
I appreciate one of the central tenets of the movie, the idea that language shapes our thought patterns and even, to some extent, our abilities (which I’ve just discovered is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). However, the particular ability enabled here (which I shan’t reveal, despite it’s playing a part in the apparent madness of the lead character) annoyed me as it seems plainly ridiculous to me.
My Arts Editor disagrees with me.
Regardless, I think this movie had us on the edge of our seats – not so much for the action as for the intellectual stimulation. The aliens are deliciously depicted in the Burkean manner of sublimity, which is to say we’re always sure there’s more to them than we’re seeing. And if the sudden end action of the aliens bothers me, I can always put it down to Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Recommended.
