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| This is like saying 2001 was all about the hotel scene at the end. by Mischief Maker 11/26/2016, 5:39am PST | ||||
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| (spoilerz)
It's baffling the reactions I'm getting from people who didn't like the film. I had another guy tell me he was disappointed because he thought the film was promising to be lovecraftian horror the whole way through and failed to deliver. I'm so thoroughly confused because I don't think I've seen a high-concept hard sci fi film whose theme and ending was less unambiguous. The whole theme is communication. How it works and how it can go wrong. At the very start of the film Jeremy Renner is trying to talk to Amy Adams in the helicopter and she's completely unable to comprehend until someone points out her headset, signaling how even between members of the same species and culture, communication can break down over the most basic things. Then when she does put on the headset he reads the passage from her book about how language is a weapon. Boom. The entire theme of the movie right there. Like Mike at redlettermedia, I like that it's a movie about people solving a problem with logic. But even more than that, I like that nobody in the movie is an asshole. Everyone's actions has a justification. When Forrest Whittaker is angry and hostile, he makes it clear that he's got a bunch of bureaucrats breathing down his neck and needs to give them an explanation, and when she provides it he's satisfied. Even the Alex Jones fans who try to blow up the aliens don't do so until the aliens say they're here to "give weapon" which the top brass has been saying the whole movie could be a first step toward global conquest. There's even a suspense moment straight out of Hitchcock where the bomb is on the alien ship and the two scientists are cluelessly trying to communicate their new idea while the heptopod is banging on the glass making sounds they don't understand that "there's a fucking bomb in the room!" Communicating with alien intelligence movies are doomed to disappointing endings, I think. They've either barreled on with the disappointment like Contact, or made the ending weird and ambiguous like 2001 or Soderbergh's Solaris. I think Arrival acquits itself about as well as it can at this doomed task. Like Vested Id pointed out, there's a pet theory that method of communication influences thought, so the movie takes that idea and expands it to, "well what if you start talking like an alien, what would that do to your thought process?" Yeah, the ability to see through time opens up all sorts of chicken and egg problems, but I think the movie wiggles out of the worst of it by making clear that this power is imperfect, like when the Chinese Admiral meets Amy Adams in the future and she has no memory of talking with him previously despite that being a pivotal moment for humanity. |
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"Arrival" is very good hard sci fi. by 11/22/2016, 6:46pm PST  Not hard sci-fi by 11/22/2016, 11:08pm PST You JUST NAMED the concept the movie expores! (spoilerz btw) NT by 11/23/2016, 6:26am PST I thought this movie was stupid. (spoilers) by 11/25/2016, 8:50pm PST I appreciate that they made a sci-fi movie without explosions and chases by 11/25/2016, 11:55pm PST This is like saying 2001 was all about the hotel scene at the end. by 11/26/2016, 5:39am PST Bah! Was less ambiguous. COMMUNCATION! NT by 11/26/2016, 5:40am PST Wait... no... argh! I'm going back to bed. NT by 11/26/2016, 5:42am PST Re: This is like saying 2001 was all about the hotel scene at the end. (spoilers by 11/27/2016, 6:07am PST Okay, I misinterpreted you. NT by 11/27/2016, 7:26am PST |
