Twelve alien spaceships appear and are hovering in various locations around the world. Countries are working together on how to communicate with these strange creatures and among them are a high-level linguistics professor, Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). Over a series of long, drawn out sessions, they establish some kind of communication, but does it mean what they think it means?
I kind of get why people might like this, but I was bored. It was sooooooo slow, and while there was some beauty in the filming, I just didn’t get it. Plus, it has a ‘twist’ – at least, I think it was a twist. For me, however, I had no engagement with any of the characters; I didn’t care about the aliens or why they were there. I was somewhat intrigued by the concept of what a world does when aliens are hanging about and what we might actually do to attempt communication – in fact, the more I think about this, the more fascinated I am. I think it’s because so much sci fi have some kind of auto translating thing to avoid the whole concept of cross species communication.
Arrival won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound Editing and was nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Denis Villeneuve), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing and Best Achievement in Production Design.
ireckonthat 