Could Arrival Be This Year’s Best Picture?
I will say it now: Arrival deserves at the very least an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and in my opinion Best Director, Writer, Screenplay, and Actress as well.
2016 for a lot of people has been a year of disappointment in the film world. We were promised many blockbuster’s that, in an understatement, “fell short of expectations.” As the year begins to come to an end, I was wondering if I had seen any “great” films this year. I certainly enjoyed Kubo and the Two Strings as one of the best family films in recent memory, and Hell or High Water was a very welcome change of pace in a now generic sub-genre of “modern-westerns,” but had I seen any movie that really transcended the traditional cinema going experience? After viewing Arrival, I realized exactly what I was looking for.
Before giving a brief synopsis, I just want to say now: if you are reading this, go see this movie. It’s really best to see this knowing as little as possible aside from knowing it’s a science fiction film, and everyone deserves to see it. Some may not understand it as much as others, but frankly I do not care; this is an excellent film to anyone who knows anything about movies and it deserves its dues. Now getting on to what this movie is actually about…
Arrival tells the intimate story of linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who is hired by the United States military in an attempt to interpret the language of the aliens who have arrived in colossal UFOs. We follow the findings of her and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), as they race against time to find a purpose for why the aliens have come to visit our planet, before other nations around the globe make a drastic decision.
Director Denis Villeneuve takes us on this journey and uses his masterful talents of filmmaking to provide a science fiction environment that seems to be an equal dose of surrealism mixed with hyper-realism. Anyone who is familiar with Villeneuve’s past films, particularly last year’s Sicario, know that he utilizes the effect of framing often in his work. This is evident in many scenes of Arrival, as it seems at times as if we are literally viewing a moving painting, further emphasizing the fact that you really are viewing a work of art. Furthermore, Arrival makes excellent use of the bleak and dreary grey color scale that is used for the entirety of the movie, creating a very melancholy and ominous effect in the presence of the “heptapods” (the term the scientists eventually give the aliens).
The themes brought forward in Arrival illicit a kind of emotional substance that has been lacking in many sci-fi films as of late. Some of these themes were touched upon in 2014’s Interstellar, but were done so superficially that they never really stuck with me. Arrival manages to take on global themes of follies of human judgement and the militarization of our entire planet, as well as much more intimate and small-scale themes such as the importance of a child’s relationship with their parent and what it means to feel alone. If done incorrectly these ideas and concepts can seem trivial in modern film, but it is again perfectly crafted in Arrival to give just enough of an emotional resonance with the audience to make its presence worthwhile.
By the end of the movie you feel as if you have been through an intense journey of a beautifully crafted narrative, as well as a philosophical journey of your mind. When was the last time we were able to watch a movie that allows us to feel this way? I know, for me, it has been ages, and I missed the feeling that this movie gives; actual contemplation and reflection at the end of a near perfect high-concept film
I truly cannot say enough good things of this movie. To not like it is to simply be incorrect. Some movies are left to opinion on what makes them good, but Arrival is one of the rare films that simply just IS great. It may take some extra brainpower to process all the information being presented, but in the end every moment of the film is worth your undivided attention, as it is the masterpiece that many of us have been craving for quite some time.
