![]() ![]() They are tall black squid-like figures with seven spindly legs - at least, that’s what they look like from the bottom for a long time, we don’t see their top halves - and those legs, up close, look like giant bony hands with their fingers pointed down and planted on a table. No, the aliens aren’t anthropomorphic creatures who speak in subtitles. At last they come to a rectangle of light, which turns out to be a clear pane behind which the aliens appear, shrouded in billows of smoky white.ĭo I even have to say “spoiler alert”? Discovering what the aliens in “Arrival” look like, sound like, and how they communicate is the dramatic heart and soul of the picture - a drama of elegantly hushed and heightened anticipation that Villeneuve stages with maximum cunning. They are then ushered into what looks like an abandoned elevator shaft with walls made of carbon, where gravity disappears (they walk straight up and sideways). Villeneuve builds our anticipation with great flair, as the two world experts stand beneath the ship, waiting for it to open. The actress is alive to what’s around her, even when it’s just ordinary, and when it’s extraordinary the inner fervor she communicates is quietly transporting. Renner’s role is rather modest, and he looks almost sheepish about it, but Adams draws on her gift for making each and every moment quiver with discovery. Ian Connelly ( Jeremy Renner), a theoretical physicist with a cut-and-dried view of things. It’s Louise’s job to draw on her language skills to find a way to communicate with the aliens, and to that end she’s teamed with Dr. The images are stately and vast, with an almost super-earthly clarity. The aliens have parked spaceships in 12 locations around the world (including America, Russia, China, and Pakistan), and Louise is taken to the one in the United States: a vast green meadow in Montana, surrounded by hills and rolling clouds, where the ship hovers like a silent, mile-high version of a smooth obsidian egg that’s been cut in two. He then plays a recording of the attempt that has been made so far to communicate with the aliens, who respond with what sound like the voices of whales. ![]() Then an Army colonel shows up in her office to recruit her help, but instead of the usual blustery movie military officer, he’s played by Forest Whitaker tossing out lines in a croaky semi-whisper (which turns out to be a lot more intriguing). Louise Banks ( Amy Adams), a linguistics professor who has to cut her class short and then wanders through the parking lot in a daze. ![]() There are TV anchors blaring news reports in the background, a dulling sense of chaos and fear, but mostly we’re taking it all in through the eyes of Dr. Villeneuve, the director or “Sicario” and “Prisoners,” has made a grounded, deep-dish authenticity his calling card, and in the early scenes of “Arrival” he hooks us by playing the news of spaceships hovering over earth in the most low-key, randomly unsensational way possible. So you have to say this for “ Arrival,” a solemnly fantastic tale of a highly enigmatic alien visit that premiered today at the 73rd International Venice Film Festival: The film has been made, by the intensely gifted director Denis Villeneuve, with an awareness that we’ve already been through this more than enough times, and that the definition of an alien movie - or, at least, one that’s trying to be a serious piece of sci-fi, and not just a popcorn lark like “Independence Day” - is that it’s going to hypnotize us with something that appears extraordinary because it’s altogether unprecedented.įor a while, “Arrival” succeeds in doing that.
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