"What Do They Want? Where Are They From...?
As a self-expressed movie geek, now and then you often come across a film which makes you optimistic regarding the future of cinema, a film which takes away all the pain of sitting through hours upon hours of absolute tosh during a fair portion of the year and most importantly, a film which makes you grateful for having access to the medium of cinema and the minds of those behind an achievement such as Arrival, the latest from Denis Villeneuve, of whom I am a massive, massive fan of; a director who has not put a foot wrong so far in his career, with films such as Incendies, Prisoners, Enemy and last years' white-knuckle thriller Sicario, all being part of an already impressive body of work. Based upon Ted Chiang's short story, "Story of Your Life", Arrival is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year, if not recent cinematic history, with a mix of intelligent and captivating science fiction alongside a melancholic drama at its' core, Villeneuve's latest only further cements his skill as one of today's most impressive cinematic minds.
After the arrival of twelve mysterious objects, each taking their place in separate areas of the world, linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is tasked with scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to effectively communicate with the alien beings in order to understand the logic behind their arrival on Earth. With each of the twelve countries in which these mysterious objects have landed attempting to do the same, Arrival is a captivating take on the age-old story of first contact, one which has no problem in taking its' time to tell a story and one which relies on effective characterisation and a storming performance from Amy Adams to achieve a feat of pure cinematic wonder. With an effective and powerful screenplay from Eric Heisserer alongside Adams's performance the real big selling points of the movie, it would be easy to disregard the many other positives associated with the film including Johann Johannsson's score, one that encompasses both the subtle use of dream-like whispers with epic howls of thunder and one that continues the successful pairing of Johannsson and Villeneuve after their collaboration on Sicario.
Although the cinematography by Bradford Young is more than satisfying, you do feel a sense of regret that Roger Deakins isn't behind the shoot, particularly after thinking back to Deakins's work on both Prisoners and Sicario, yet even without the distinct style of the Devonian legend, Arrival is still a stunning picture to admire, with the opening discovery of the cloud-smothered UFO rivalling the shot captured in Sicario in which we watch FBI agents disappear into the descending sunset. Venturing into the realms of sci-fi before his work on the upcoming Blade Runner sequel, Denis Villeneuve has once again created an astonishing piece of work, one which continues the successes of Sicario and takes it one step further. Heartbreaking come the end, Arrival will no doubt require repeat viewings like any true work of effective science fiction, science fiction which is not only intelligent, but is handled in such a way that is knows not to spoil the audience and simply blast the plot at you like many blockbusters tend to do in this day and age. Quite simply, Arrival is the best science fiction film of the year and one which needs to be witnessed in the biggest screen you can find without resorting to spoiler-filled reviews first. Instead, let the film's magic come to you organically and hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did. Villeneuve, you are in the Nolan-esque realms of legendary status already.
No comments:
Post a Comment