Entertainment Geekly: On shallow Deep Thoughts and godless Space-Gods.
NOTE: The following contains spoilers forArrival, a movie many fine people love for some reason.
There have been many dumb movies made in our dumb century.
Credit: Everett Collection; Paramount Pictures
Impressive, maybe, howArrivalwaits over an hour before it actively starts insulting your intelligence.
Helpful, too, that the movie stars good actors as smart people.
Amy Adams is Louise Banks, a linguist; Jeremy Renner is Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist.
They are friendly and they are competitive, like university professors at a faculty-only boozy brunch.
At one point, Donnelly tells Banks, You approach language like a mathematician.
Banks and Donnelly have a go at talk to each other.
Mostly, they give a shot to talk to aliens.
The reason to seeArrivalis to see Adams struggle towards communication with these seven-legged creatures.
Her mission: To establish a common tongue with beings who have no tongue.
Banks is afraid of the aliens, and delighted by them, intellectually stimulated and frustrated.
Its a fine performance by Adams, who has to carry a lot of weight.
The aliens dont look all that convincing.
Theyre so shrouded indistance fog, an understandable cost-cutting measure that nevertheless just feels like a cost-cutting measure.
But Adams makes you believe in them or anyhow, you believeshebelieves in them.
The Heptapods have a written language.
They spray ink-fog from a tentacle phallus to form cryptograms in mid-air.
The plot problem is that language spoken, written, whatever is ambiguous.
At one point, the squid-things declare: There is no time.
Is that a warning or a philosophy?
Are these aliens a warrior race, or just hardcore fans of McConaughey fromTrue Detective?
(Their writing, you will notice, is flat circles.)
Arrivalcomes on strong like an intimate cerebral character piece.
But it isnt notIndependence Day-ish.
Confused and scared about the aliens intentions, the world flips out.
The back half ofArrivalis a ticking clock, maybe to Armageddon.
There are familiar tropes: Clips from fake news networks, paper-thin military types going rogue for paper-thin reasons.
There is The Unspoken Military Might of China as a co-lead.
The world descends into chaos, and Banks stares at a chalkboard.
Compared to kindergarten, fifth grade is college.
(ASIDE:You could could argue thatArrivaldoesnt explicitly state Banks is saving the world.
So maybe Banks isjustsaving the extraterrestrials.
Theres a phony core toArrival, though, which emerges gradually and then suddenly.
The film opens with the birth, life, and death of Banks daughter.
The devastation of her loss haunts the film; mother-daughter scenes play through the movie.
ButArrival, turns out, is entirely a Plot Movie.
As Banks learns the aliens language, her consciousness comes unstuck in time.
The daughter weve been seeing hasnt even been born yet.
Theres an angle where this could be wild and interesting.
But the film loses its ambition.
The dialogue goes downhill, too.
In one of the flashforwards, Banks mentions that her daughters unseen father is a scientist.
Actually, what Banks says in that scene is: You want science?
Hmmm, are there any scientists in this movie?
Perhaps any handsome scientists played by the second-billed performer?
Perhapspretty much the only other human we see Amy Adams interact with?
ButArrivalisnt really a chemistry kind of movie, nor really a performer kind of movie.
And the narrative trickery obscures a bigger problem.
Communication is difficult,Arrivaltells us, but not impossible.
All ambiguities can become certainties.
The aliens are here to help us; we can learn how to help each other.
you might say, and So what?
The Renner Romance and the Cute Daughter = happy feels and sad feels.
But its frustrating, how completelyArrivalstacks its own deck.
And how it mixes together its listless ideas.
Can she appreciate every moment, the good and the bad?
Are you Pro-Goodness or anti-Cute Daughter?
is the question of the movie.
There is no third option.
Story of Your Life doesnt have any military-threat subplot, no race-against-the-Armageddon-clock final act.
The story has no shootout, no explosion, no rogue soldiers.
Itdoeshave a conversation about Fermats Principle, and at one point the narrator uses the phrase a Borgesian fabulation.
Someone on Twitter told me the aliens are just a metaphor, and the movie is about loneliness.
Arrivalbelongs to a subgenre of science fiction cinema that doesnt really have a proper name.
You know it when you see it.
Some heads prefer the term Hard Science Fiction, but that sounds too egotistical and too judgmental.
It commingles seriousness with toughness, implying that anything else is somehow too soft.
(Perhaps Realishtic?)
Realism as an aesthetic term is unhelpful now, vague enough that it can apply to anything.
By way of contrast to, like,Transformers 3, you could say thatArrivalrepresents Deep-Thought Science Fiction.
But Im not sureArrivalactually has any deep thoughts.
There are no swashbucklers, no spacefights, no alien princesses, no aliens human-looking enough to be sexy.
If that sounds like fun: Congratulations, youre the moviegoer Hollywood cant afford to believe in.
Making Science Fiction Without Rayguns generally demands a big budget and generally promises no easy thrills.
Peoplebarelywant to see science fiction movies as it is.
Fantasy has always been more popular at the box office especially depending on which bucket you tossStar Warsinto.
(It has spaceships, but also swordfights; it has rayguns, but also wizards.)
Some films in this genre get around the budget thing with a lo-fi aesthetic.
The brilliant time travel potboilerPrimerwas shot for lunch money in houses and public spaces.
Yet2001is generally accepted as the pinnacle of the real-ish science fiction genre.
You either think2001is a perfect movie or you think its totally boring.
But I understand the latter perspective, too.2001features a bare minimum of exposition, most of it inscrutable.
The actors barely form facial expressions.
Theres a five-minute scene where a guy runs and runs and runs.
Its never made explicitly clear why anything is happening, ever.
Which, to be clear: Its all incredible, incredible, incredible.
Its hard to imagine anyone making2001today, because its hard to imagine how anyone ever made2001.
The film introduces a charming talking computer and sends that computer on a quietly murderous rampage.
Arrivalcertainly has a lot in common withClose Encounters.
Spielbergs film ends with scientists at a base camp trying to communicate with extraterrestrials in a floating ship.
Thats whereArrivalbegins, middles, and ends, what with time being such a flat circle.
Then, she fights sketchy government types (including James Woods, at Peak Sketchy Government TypeNixon).
Andthenshe has to audition for the chance to travel through space to fulfill her whole lifes work!
in front of a UN-ish panel, televised around the world.
And this scientist is asked, in full view of the world, Do you believe in God?
Arroway tells the truth.
As a scientist, I rely on empirical evidence, she explains.
I dont believe there is data either way.
The whole panel visibly sags.
Doesnt 95 percent of the human race believe in a Supreme Being?
Shouldnt any representative of that race believe that, too?
Foster refuses to pander.
Then Tom Skerritt takes the stand, for his own audition.
The panel selects Drumlin.
I toldthe truthup there, says Arroway.
Drumlin told you exactly what you wanted to hear.
A woman tells the world hard truths, and is punished for her honesty.
A man tells the world what they want to hear, and is rewarded for his opportunism.
Like the best Science Fiction Without Rayguns,Contacthas far outlived its original context.
LikeArrival, it does get fuzzier as it goes along.
Arroway achieves her own dead-relative transcendence.
Small moves, the alien tells Jodie Foster.Contactis an argument against grand gestures.
Its a passionate ode to, of all things, incrementalism.
The film solves wealth disparity using advanced medical technology.
Its the least thoughtful sort of science fiction: Having addressed a real problem,Elysiuminvents an impossible solution.
The film was directed by Neill Blomkamp, whohas since admittedthat the story wasnt quite all there.
It suffers from our modern story gravity: The world is at stake.
Thats true ofArrival, too, and I dont think it should be overlooked.
In2001, the fate of the world wasnt at stake.
The monoliths, previously an unknowable outside force, reveal themselves as helpful parental figures.
They transform Jupiter into a star, which makes the moon Europa into a new vibrant planet.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book2010in 1982.
The book is more austere, clinical, less dramatic, and better.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
Its in the film of2010that the big world-saving stakes come to the forefront.
And the film updates that final message, too:
USE THEM TOGETHER.
USE THEM IN PEACE.
A mysterious warning becomes a blessing, a preaching.
(A nihilist would argue that2001is about how Earth is a laboratory and were the lab rats.)
Maybe2010makes you feel better than2001because everyone in2010is nice.
(Even HAL is nice in2010).
In 2014, Christopher Nolan deliveredInterstellar, a film which gilds wormhole physics with daddy-daughter emotionality.
And its unquestionably anicefilm.
It declares that the whole fourth dimensional architecture of time and space is made out of love.
My favorite character inInterstellaris the one nominal bad guy.
Matt Damon plays Dr. Mann, probably an homage:Nolan loves Michael Mann, asall good people do.
He tries to kill Matthew McConaughey, but Manns true villainy is philosophical.
There is no Space-God there to save anyone.
For all their apocalyptic scene-setting and mild paranoia about political figures,InterstellarandArrivalare comforting films.
They replace the spiritual higher power with a pop-science Higher Power, extraterrestrials and extradimensionals.
the Bizarro-world inversion of Dr. Mann.
Its an endearing vision, no doubt.
Perhaps you think we need comfort right now, more than ever.
And weshouldbe nicer to each other.
I didnt need a movie to tell me that; and I dont think sincerity equals profundity.
If you think good intentions make a movie great, go watchCrash.
A little ways in the future, Earth is in trouble.
The sun is dying.
Nobody onboard talks says as much, but everyone knows that theyre probably on a suicide mission.
(Its a cruddy business, sometimes, making movies.)
It lost track of itself, is how Garlandrecently describedSunshine.
Then theres a big action scene set to John Murphys rousing score.
Then the crew, grieving, ponders some more.
Hard decisions have to be made.
What had been a capital-m Meditation On The Cosmos becomes a slasher film.
The end result is a mess, but even its least convincing plot turn has some resonant truth.
The maniac astronaut has found religion, see.
All our science, all our hopes, our dreams, are foolish!
Hes named Robert Capa, an homage to the war photographer famous for his pictures from Omaha Beach.
None of the actions taken by Murphys character are obviously good-guy heroic.
Murphy claims that working on the moviemade him an atheist.
Sunshineoffers another possibility, tough, bleak, and truly hopeful.
Maybe the sunwontshine again for us.
But we can see to it it shines for someone else.
