Arrival Review

If you’re a Sci-Fi loyalist, Arrival is your movie.

If you’re scared of complex representations of already complex themes, Arrival still is your movie!

Denis Villeneuve’s modern masterpiece is precisely calculated and highly ambitious, for its objective exceeds telling a story.

Mysterious spacecraft touchdowns across the globe perplex humans as they struggle to solve the dichotomy of the spacecrafts’ consequential intentions. Linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) joins the US Army team to decipher the ‘language’ of two alien ‘heptapods’ in one such spacecraft. But, can it be called language?

As mankind teeters between violence and toleration on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers. But, do they?

To find them, does she take the chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity?

How is time actually related to metaphysics and structuralism? What do the aliens actually want inside the Earth?

Plot: Villeneuve approaches these questions with a prevailing ‘reality’, a word seemingly paradoxical to the genre yet adding substantial uniqueness and mystery to an excellent plot.

Performances: Amy Adams delivers impeccably. Her range of emotions throughout Banks’ personal losses, gradual loss of time sense and unsettling daydreams is phenomenal. The others perform at par too.

Background Score: Johann Johannsson composes an extremely appropriate and complementing score.

Cinematography:Exquisitely breathtaking work by Bradford Young. Further adjectives can be realised by one’s own self, post watching.