It’s great to see some more cerebral Sci-Fi! Not the usual explosion-laden, aliens-as-a-surrogate for an Other America is supposed to hate. I’m amazed this movie even got made but I guess the studio approved Arrival when they looked at the cast.
The story takes place around now given the technology, dress, etc. when the aliens show up in about a dozen different global locations. Of course they have at least one ship in America, we’re pretty important, yet they chose Montana instead of LA or New York City. Dr. Banks is brought in by the Army for her expertise on linguistics since initial attempts at understanding the aliens have failed; their verbal language sounds like unintelligible grunts to us.
Afterwards, the movie is a series of scenes involving Banks and physicist Donnelly figuring out how to communicate through written language. They’re not alone, the other nations with aliens in their backyards are sharing what they’ve learned, oddly. Then matters hit a crisis, otherwise there wouldn’t really be a movie. The climax is how Banks gets everything back on track because everyone is worried about what kind of whoop-ass the aliens could unleash on the world.
One major point Arrival makes is about language. For those of us mono-lingual Americans, trying to learn something beyond English is hard. Why? The key is to think in the language you’re learning. Romantic languages, not too bad, they have numerous cognates. Asian and Middle-Eastern? They’re rather alien to us. Now try to imagine what Dr. Banks is attempting with creatures who write lumpy circles of squid ink.
Alamo Extras: Yeasayer video; Trailers for Have Rocket, Will Travel (Three Stooges), 2001, Contact, The Day The Earth Stood Still and Abbott & Costello Go To Mars; French music video of a space woman and another involving little green men; Saucer man cartoon (looked awful); the Babel sequence from Metropolis; an Italian music video of English gibberish (intentionally); Monty Python’s Hungarian translation book skit; Bosnians covering Serge Gainsbourg; Kanji tattoos that make no sense; and a band that put the lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air through Google translate.