By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Abigail Pniowsky and Tzi Ma.
Rating: Excellent.
Denis Villenueve, director of “Sicario” and “Prisoners” brings “Arrival”, a drama sci-fi that again, Villeneuve delivers.
The movie centers on Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) a linguist whosuffered a terrible tragedy in the past.
Eventually, she will berecruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) who tells her that an unidentified flying object has arrived to earth.
Banks agrees on helping with the mission and shewill be working with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and both will try to establish alien communications even if it means to put their lives and the rest of humanity at stake.
“Arrival” is not the typical science fiction film that aliens attack earth and there is battle between humans and the creatures; this is more than that and is a movie that has a profound and deep message that I was really captivated and moved by it.
Denis Villeneuve is a director that knows how to portray the external conflict with the characters and has became a trademark in all of his films.
His direction has constantly surprised me and it has become a tradition that since “Prisoners” back in 2013, he has released a movie each year and every single one of them gets better and better.
The script written by Eric Heisserer, who wrote this year’s “Lights Out” which I consider one of the revelations this year in the horror genre, wrote a complete different script that is not precisely a horror film and it’s a complete genre and it work. It´s admirable when a writer makes something new that is not in their genre and Heisserer took a shot on writing a movie that not only deals with aliens but deals with themes personal themes.
This is so far, Villeneuve’s most ambitious movie due to the amount of visual effects that the movie carried on and the cast was more ambtious since there are two Academy Award Nominees (Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner) and a winner (Forest Whitaker) and again the three of them gave interesting performances.
The cinematography, which thist time was not by Roger Deakins, who works regularly with Villeneuve and now he collaborated with Bradford Young, who’s work are movie like “Selma” and “A Most Violent Year” did a really great job. The lighting used played a very good contrast with the scenes were they were with the aliens and also without them.
The score by Jóhan Jóhannson, who did the score for “The Theory of Everything” was outstandingand the cues he used for the scenes where we see most of the conflict of the characters works at all levels.
I´ve mentioned before that I´m not in favor in using flashbacks in storytelling but here this element was used properly and it really worked since it’s part of the main conflict with Amy Adam’s character.
“Arrival” I consider it a special movie and more than a sci-fi film is a drama and I give it a huge recommendation.