Arrival (2016)

This structured stream of consciousness reflection/review was written in the immediate aftermath of completing Arrival during the spring semester of my sophomore year at college. In preparation for that year's 89th Academy Awards, I saw all 9 Best Picture nominees: Arrival was the final nominee watched. My overall rating for the film is 4 stars out of a possible 4. It was the 220th film to receive my highest rating distinction.

I just don’t know where to start. I have just finished all of the Best Picture nominees for 2016. Unintentionally, I bookended them with the two best films of last year, Moonlight & Arrival. But they're not just the best of 2016, they're also serious contenders for the Top 100 All-Time Best Films. This is the third greatest science fiction film of all-time. Only [Stanley] Kubrick’s and [Ridley] Scott’s respective masterpieces, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982), are superior to Arrival.

Now, I am not angry with the film. I understand the path its plot takes, and without these certain distinct storytelling decisions, the film would not be as strong as it is. But there is an unfortunate irony that the inclusion of two specific developments within the plot are both necessary for Arrival to be great and two of the primary reasons why it does not deserve Best Picture over Moonlight. Without these two developments and the masterful approach director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer take to breaking through them, Arrival would be shackled to a recurrent science fiction plot trope. With these two developments, one becomes aware of the unfortunate side effect that hampers any science fiction film that wishes to advance with a "first contact" storyline.

The two moments in the film I speak of are where the story gets a bit cliché and in turn, drives me insane. Why, whenever there is an alien presence or a creature that we are made recently aware of -- we here meaning mankind although it is almost always mankind residing in the United States -- does the military need to fuck things up by resorting to a tactic that screams, “I don’t understand you, therefore I don’t want to understand, and I will do everything in my power to beat the shit out of you, because brawn is so clearly better than brains, and I don’t see why we need to even discuss how to handle it, because we have weapons and my testosterone levels are through the roof and can make laps around the distance that this thing’s traveled to get here!”? And why, after this happens and the military is so clearly at fault, yet no one seems to care to place this blame on them because when has the military ever learned, from nearly causing extinction to mankind and the vaporization of the planet in countless films and real life, is there the supervisor, supposedly the most sound and intelligent individual at the situation, strutting around with his dunce cap on proudly ignoring all of the reason that he would listen to if the military hadn’t gone all gung ho just moments earlier? Why doesn’t someone just take away the military’s toys or give them a brain? (Short requirement for this theoretical brain transplant: The replacement brain must be larger than the one they have and larger than the next size up -- this would require that the minimum size of the new brain would be a walnut-sized brain that mimics that of a stegosaurus.) Why doesn’t someone slap the supervisor, or better yet, replace him? This happens again and again and again and again and again in film. But I need to digress, because without these cliché, boneheaded continuations in the plot, Louise (Amy Adams) would not have been able to receive her gift from Earth's visitors. Okay, my rant is over, I promise.

The direction here is simply incredible and to me, it’s a tossup for whether Villeneuve or Damien Chazelle (La La Land) deserves it. I want to know where the Best Score nomination is for Jóhann Jóhannsson, because his score is incredibly powerful and crucial to the film's atmosphere. Currently, I believe this oversight is the second most glaring omission at this year's Oscars, following Finding Dory not being up for Best Animated Feature. I am ignoring the misplaced nomination of Viola Davis that I've referenced in a previous review, which is clearly the most glaring mistake nomination-wise.

Damn near everything in this film is done well. If this came out last year, I think it would have won Best Picture. This and Spotlight (2015) are neck and neck, but I would give the edge to Arrival because of the subtly abrupt and awe-inspiring plot twist. The twist is very Interstellar-like, which I say positively. The twist was what I liked about Interstellar, and although they most certainly are not identical in what the twist is and its importance to the world, the idea that time does not have to be linear is one that fascinates me, and really boosts both science fiction works. However, in Interstellar’s case, it just saves it from going down as a tolerable picture and a massive failure for all involved. In Arrival’s case, it propels the film from teetering between 3.5 & 4 stars to a top-tier science fiction entry and elite film not only of the 2010s, but in all of cinema.

I am still amazed at the moment I was taken aback by and acknowledged the impressiveness of this film: when the bomb was counting down, I felt nothing. Sure, I experienced a little disappointment in the film leading up to that moment. But I knew the film had more to offer, that Arrival was cleverer than just ending it there. I was confident that there would be more to come, more to boost the film, redirect it from the idiocy of a few guys in camo. And I was right. When Louise made her ascension strangely similar to that of everyone going into the eponymous object in 1998's Sphere (which is, in quality, a very far cry from Arrival, although its source material, written by Michael Crichton, is one of my all-time favorite works of commercial fiction), my heart was in my throat, suffocating me and trying to get out of my body by using my throat and mouth as passage. And every moment from there forward, I was exuberant. Anxious and nervous for the next advancement. And Arrival did not let up.

2016 was a year for very good movies, but not necessarily a very good year for movies in general. However, it did have two of the 100 greatest feature films of all-time, which is two more than several years between 1906 and 2016 can boast.

With all this being said, I would like to end this review by taking a look back at my favorite moment from Arrival: Sheena Easton got a shout-out in one of the best film quotes of all-time. During a narration strain courtesy of Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), he remarks of the extra-terrestrial spacecrafts, "Why did they park where they did? The world's most decorated experts can't crack that one. The most plausible theory is that they chose places on earth with the lowest incidence of lightning strikes. But there are exceptions. The next most plausible theory is that Sheena Easton had a hit song at each of these sites in 1980." This quote will keep me happy and laughing to myself for many days to come, no matter the results of tonight’s Oscars.