Denis Villeneuve is a filmmaker torn between the figurative and the literal, who's drawn to emotional subjects (frequently the death of children) which he dramatizes with a mathematical painter's eye. There's poetry in his films, far more than one's accustomed to finding in mainstream American cinema, but this poetry is often corralled to serve a pat purpose. One senses Villeneuve's consciousness of this constraining tendency and his eagerness to break free of it, such as in Enemy, which strives to be free-wheeling and hallucinatory, achieving these qualities only in fussy dribs and drabs. It's logical in this context, then, that Villeneuve would make a film featuring an artist-type and a rationalist, as they embody the dueling tendencies of his sensibility.
Adapted from Ted Chiang's short story The Story of Your Life, Arrival is about Earth's first encounter with extraterrestrials. At the beginning of the film, 12 half-spherical metal craftswhich suggest the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey if it were shaped like a skinny egghover above major countries, inviting us to discern their intentions. The narrative is set on the American site of contact in Montana, where the United States military has recruited Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguist, and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), a mathematician, to decode sounds that could be alien speech. A telling bit of dialogue encapsulates how Louise and Ian respectively approach this mind-bending opportunity: Louise claims that language, which is somewhat open to interpretation, is the foundation of civilization, while Ian counters that society owes its existence to theoretically more concrete science. With this contrast between intuition and rationalism established, Louise and Ian venture into a great unknown oft plumbed by science fiction and horror films.
Of course, aliens have been visiting Earth in the movies nearly since the inception of cinema, and mediocre filmmakers, viewing tropes merely as tropes, often forget to evoke the unimaginable awesomeness and terror of actual alien contact. By exhilarating contrast, Villeneuve painstakingly communicates the aliens' alien-ness. Louise and Ian's first exposure to the spaceship isn't tossed off as an inciting incident, but used as fodder for a set piece that suggests a merging of Steven Spielberg's sense of wonder and Stanley Kubrick's propensity for sinister visual symmetry.
Louise and Ian's ascension into the spaceship, where they will speak with the aliens, involves an intoxicatingly immersive procedure that allows audiences to grasp, step by step, the characters' transition from the realm of the mundane to that of the fantastic. Obsessive tracking shots follow a lift that bridges the distance from the ground to the entrance of the craft, which opens every 18 hours when the aliens are ready to convene. (This meeting time is signaled, in the military camp, by an ominous, pulsating horn that's reminiscent of the blaring sound effects from Spielberg's War of the Worlds.)
Louise and Ian enter the ship, lose gravity, and proceed to stroll straight up a bare, surreally vertical passageway that suggests a hallway in a chic museum. Eventually they reach the aliens, who live in a tank of fog and resemble giant, standing squid and sound, poignantly, like whales. It takes only a few of these visits for the wounded, empathetic Louise to broker a huge discovery: that the aliens have a written language, expressed by ink that shoots out of their tendrils, forming floating shapes suggestive of circular Rorschach ink blots.
These details are irresistible, as Arrival's unusually interested in the process of communicationat least for a while. For instance, while Louise is using English as the bedrock of her negotiation with the aliens, the Chinese are utilizing the symbols of Mahjong, a competitive game that colors their dialogues with a degree of conflict that's inherent in the chosen symbology, paralleling a test that Louise proffers to the American military at the beginning of the film. She tells the military to evaluate her rival for this job by asking him for the Sanskrit word for war. The rival produces a word that Louise interprets, presumably more truthfully, as a desire to trade cows. The point is that language shapes our conception of reality and vice versa. (One recalls a plot driving George Orwell's 1984, in which a hunger for freedom is to be destroyed by obliterating the word itself.)
Louise may have an artist's comfort with intuition, but she's also a lonely academic locked in a prison of intellectuality, analyzing life to death from a distance (as Ian says, she's more of a mathematician than she might care to admit). Louise yearns for transcendence, which she correctly discerns as a point of commonality with the aliens she observes. And what the aliens offer Louise and humankind at large is a revolutionary circular language which ushers forth a reality of simultaneity, free of distinctions of past, present, and future. At a stage in her life, Louise lost a daughter to a rare disease, a tragedy which Villeneuve visualizes in woozy, rueful shards of imagery that evoke The Tree of Life. At the film's climax, we realize that the heartbreak of Louise's family isn't in her past, but her now visible future, and she plunges into it anyway, understanding something that's often tough for highly rational introverts to grasp: that ecstasy is impossible without loss.
As staged by Villeneuve and acted by Adams and Renner, this is all quite movingso moving, in fact, that it might take one a little while to discern that Arrival has neatly wedded the pacifist message of Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still with the three-hanky bombast of any melodrama with a dead child or alienated professional at its center. For all of the film's considerable craftsmanship, one keeps tripping on the pop-cultural derivations and signposts. At times, Villeneuve suggests M. Night Shyamalan without the neurosis and self-consciousness.
Abandoned somewhere in Arrival's third act is the interest in language as the fabric of our reality, as the catalyst for the blossoming of Louise's new existence as she becomes a woman without time, a potential new Billy Pilgrim. The film ends just as it's revving up, then, evading the formidable formalist challenge of breaking the barriers of beginnings and endings, causes and effects. Louise may find freedom, or a new prison, but the ramifications of that freedom are unimagined as anything other than a superficially uplifting punchline. Villeneuve is a near-visionary who can't break free of formula.
The image's blacks and browns are rich and varied, and the silvery autumnal tones that dominate Arrival are sharp. Details are appropriately subtle for a film that's so occupied with tactile textures. Minute facial specifics are detectable (one can make out the nearly colorless hair high on characters' cheeks), and grace notes abound, such as the interplay of the various shades of white light in the alien fog. The soundtracks, particularly the English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, offer plenty of requisite genre-movie bombast (like the bass-y approach of the spaceships) while preserving the fragile intricacy of the flutes and wood instruments that bolster the sonic bridging and rhyming of the score and sound editing. A gorgeous and attentive transfer.
The extrashereare strikingly sincere, offering an earnest portrait of gifted artists seeking to carve out their own niche in the speculative science-fiction genre. Five featurettes cover a variety of topics: the film's inception, the sound design, the score, the editing, and a brief overview of the principles of time, memory, and language that drive the narrative. There are particularly choice bits with composer Jhann Jhannsson recording and manipulating choral voices, while claiming that he wanted to use vocals in the score to bridge the music with the film's thematic emphasis on communication. The editor, Joe Walker, discusses the film's tricky editing rhythms, particularly the honing required to coherently land that third-act twist. Ted Chiang, the author of Arrival's source material, "The Story of Your Life," discusses the concept of linearity, and the idea that the past, present, and future all already exist. Correspondingly, Chiang discusses the impetus of his story and his drive to explore the question of what a human would do if they knew their future and couldn't change it due to the potential laws of physics. (This is a nuance that's regrettably marginalized in Arrival, which implies that the heroine's refusal to alter her life is a conscious, life-affirming act of bravery.) Like everyone else interviewed here, Chiang is passionate and erudite, offering thoughts that expand our understanding of the intentions driving Arrival.
Denis Villeneuve's moving yet disappointingly cautious mind-bender is accorded a robustly beautiful transfer and surprisingly thoughtful supplements.
Visit link:
- Rationalism | Psychology Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia [Last Updated On: December 12th, 2016] [Originally Added On: December 12th, 2016]
- rationalism facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com ... [Last Updated On: December 22nd, 2016] [Originally Added On: December 22nd, 2016]
- Rationalism in Philosophy [Last Updated On: January 3rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: January 3rd, 2017]
- Rationalism vs. Empiricism Essay - 797 Words - StudyMode [Last Updated On: January 5th, 2017] [Originally Added On: January 5th, 2017]
- Logic: Rationalism vs. Empiricism - Theology [Last Updated On: January 5th, 2017] [Originally Added On: January 5th, 2017]
- Rationalism verses Empiricism - dummies.com [Last Updated On: January 5th, 2017] [Originally Added On: January 5th, 2017]
- Taking Liberties With Workable Liberty - Big Think [Last Updated On: February 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 7th, 2017]
- Go for introspection, Left parties told - The Hindu [Last Updated On: February 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 7th, 2017]
- Look back in anger, unplugged | Asia Times - Asia Times [Last Updated On: February 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 7th, 2017]
- Food by the Book: Philosophy, love, steak - Muskogee Daily Phoenix [Last Updated On: February 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 7th, 2017]
- Hypocrisy isn't the problem. Nihilism is - Los Angeles Times [Last Updated On: February 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 8th, 2017]
- The separation of church and state - Helena Independent Record [Last Updated On: February 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 8th, 2017]
- Don't become a pawn in the NHL's Olympic Games - Fear the Fin [Last Updated On: February 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 9th, 2017]
- Australia's new political divide: 'globalists' versus 'patriots' - The Sydney Morning Herald [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2017]
- Laura Akin: Overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers were Christian - Modesto Bee [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2017]
- Hecker reemerges with more text-based synthesis on two new releases on Editions Mego - Tiny Mix Tapes [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2017]
- Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the ... - The Times (subscription) [Last Updated On: February 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 11th, 2017]
- Hanson denies Liberal preference hypocrisy - SBS [Last Updated On: February 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 12th, 2017]
- When religion rules social life - Daily News & Analysis [Last Updated On: February 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 12th, 2017]
- Will science go rogue against Donald Trump? - Socialist Worker Online [Last Updated On: February 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 13th, 2017]
- Valentine's Day and Romance - Commonweal (blog) [Last Updated On: February 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 13th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Camden Haven Courier [Last Updated On: February 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 13th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Warrnambool Standard [Last Updated On: February 14th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 14th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - The Northern Daily Leader [Last Updated On: February 15th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 15th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Western Advocate [Last Updated On: February 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 16th, 2017]
- Canadian architecture firm discusses design in the Midwest - Iowa State Daily [Last Updated On: February 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 16th, 2017]
- Why sports industry sides with transgenders - WND.com [Last Updated On: February 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 16th, 2017]
- Americans 'plain dumb' - Hastings Tribune [Last Updated On: February 17th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 17th, 2017]
- 'Modi combines Savarkar and neoliberalism': Pankaj Mishra on why this is the age of anger - Scroll.in [Last Updated On: February 17th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 17th, 2017]
- Biography examines political motivations of Montaigne - UChicago News [Last Updated On: February 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 18th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Daily Advertiser [Last Updated On: February 20th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 20th, 2017]
- Will the Science Community Go Rogue Against Donald Trump? - Truth-Out [Last Updated On: February 20th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 20th, 2017]
- The Red94 Podcast: On the Boogie Cousins trade - Red94 [Last Updated On: February 21st, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 21st, 2017]
- Refugee resettlement study bill passes North Dakota House, Democrat calls it mean-spirited - Bismarck Tribune [Last Updated On: February 21st, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 21st, 2017]
- Refugee resettlement study bill passes ND House, Democrat calls it ... - Jamestown Sun [Last Updated On: February 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 22nd, 2017]
- P. Sridhar - The Hindu - The Hindu [Last Updated On: February 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 22nd, 2017]
- The Magical Rationalism of Elon Musk and the Prophets of AI - New York Magazine [Last Updated On: February 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 22nd, 2017]
- There is an Is - Patheos (blog) [Last Updated On: February 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 22nd, 2017]
- Letter to the Editor: Banning Immigrants on the Basis of Faith Has Hudson Valley Roots - Patch.com [Last Updated On: February 23rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 23rd, 2017]
- You Don't Have To Choose Between Alt-Right And Regressive Left - Huffington Post Canada [Last Updated On: February 23rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 23rd, 2017]
- Encountering Change: A Chaplain's Perspective - Patheos (blog) [Last Updated On: February 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 24th, 2017]
- Freemasonry Catholics' Deadly Foe - Church Militant [Last Updated On: February 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 24th, 2017]
- Modernism and Its Rages - City Journal [Last Updated On: February 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 24th, 2017]
- In Scorsese's adaptation of Endo's novel, a stark depiction of statism against religion - National Review [Last Updated On: February 25th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 25th, 2017]
- Outcry over Dalai Lama threatens free speech | The Daily Cardinal - The Daily Cardinal [Last Updated On: February 27th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 27th, 2017]
- When a guitar and Sarangi took over Qalandar's shrine - The Express Tribune [Last Updated On: February 28th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 28th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Whyalla News [Last Updated On: February 28th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 28th, 2017]
- Review: 'Target in the Night' is punchy, graceful, ambiguous - The Daily Herald [Last Updated On: February 28th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 28th, 2017]
- Meet the Group of Extreme Rationalists Bent on Cheating Death - Signature Reads [Last Updated On: February 28th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 28th, 2017]
- Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Eyre Peninsula Tribune [Last Updated On: March 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 1st, 2017]
- Architecture's Pritzker Prize lauds Spanish trio for 'a strong sense of place' - The Globe and Mail [Last Updated On: March 2nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 2nd, 2017]
- The ideas election | The Indian Express - The Indian Express [Last Updated On: March 3rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 3rd, 2017]
- Serpents, owl men and demon dogs - BBC News [Last Updated On: March 3rd, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 3rd, 2017]
- Why America Can't Afford to Get Into a Trade War with China - The National Interest Online [Last Updated On: March 4th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 4th, 2017]
- Reason, Creativity and Freedom: The Communalist Model - Truth-Out [Last Updated On: March 4th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 4th, 2017]
- Pankaj Mishra's 'Age Of Anger' Is A Flawed But Fascinating Intellectual History - Swarajya [Last Updated On: March 4th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 4th, 2017]
- Thomas Isaac budget: Split between populism and Marxist rationalism - Times of India [Last Updated On: March 4th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 4th, 2017]
- Philharmonic program celebrates passion, youth - Albuquerque Journal [Last Updated On: March 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 6th, 2017]
- Interview with Deo Ssekitooleko Representative of Center for Inquiry International Uganda - Conatus News [Last Updated On: March 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 7th, 2017]
- Is Democracy Dying Before Our Eyes In America? OpEd - Eurasia Review [Last Updated On: March 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 7th, 2017]
- SBCC Presents 'A Flea in Her Ear' - Santa Barbara Independent [Last Updated On: March 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 8th, 2017]
- A French Surrealist's Eclectic Remembrances of His Cohort, Finally in English - Hyperallergic [Last Updated On: March 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 8th, 2017]
- Junk restrictive faith-based laws: Mumbai atheists - Daily News & Analysis [Last Updated On: March 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 9th, 2017]
- How to Use Imagination to Grow Your Business - Business 2 Community [Last Updated On: March 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 9th, 2017]
- Martyn Lawrence Bullard's Sumptuous Palm Springs Hideaway - Architectural Digest [Last Updated On: March 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 9th, 2017]
- Saturday (novel) - Wikipedia [Last Updated On: March 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 9th, 2017]
- Abortion Debate Poisoned By 'Pro-Choice' And 'Pro-Life' Labels - Huffington Post Canada [Last Updated On: March 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 11th, 2017]
- Stand on Tradition - The Weekly Standard [Last Updated On: March 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 11th, 2017]
- The bewildered present-day world - The New Indian Express [Last Updated On: March 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 11th, 2017]
- I watched Alex Jones give his viewers health advice. Here's what I ... - Vox [Last Updated On: April 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 8th, 2017]
- How James Ramsey of RAAD Studio, Carlos Arnaiz of CAZA, and BalletCollective turned design into dance - The Architect's Newspaper [Last Updated On: April 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 8th, 2017]
- Going overboard with cow protection - Kasmir Monitor [Last Updated On: April 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 8th, 2017]
- Anti-Intellectualism Is Just As Revolutionary As Liberalismand Much More Dangerous - Slate Magazine [Last Updated On: April 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 8th, 2017]
- Pakistani thought process - Daily Times [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- French president to the resistance: The world believes in you - Shareblue Media [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- Sophisticated Man Is Stupid - American Spectator [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- COLUMN: The statistical fallacy - The Auburn Plainsman [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- Modi governments greatest trick: Hate the intellectual - DailyO [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- A labyrinth is coming to Washington - Observer-Reporter [Last Updated On: June 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 7th, 2017]
- Letters to Editor June 7 - Curry Coastal Pilot [Last Updated On: June 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 8th, 2017]