Arrival - Lois Lane and Hawkeye Deal With Aliens (Again)

This movie is directed by Dennis V. who did his best work in Prisoners and has been in retrograde ever since.

My first concern is why do all so called good movies these days have to be a visual nightmare? The movie is so incredibly dark that it makes you feel blue and uninterested from the first shot.

The genius government officials just assume that a human translator would be able to decipher alien growling which seems random at best, unless she has learned canine or feline languages too and can implement that for translating the growling sounds made by the aliens, heard over a mere recording.

When Colonel Weber asks Louise Banks about her action plan for the visual aids, she basically tells him that she is gonna teach the aliens what we are taught in pre-nursery; how to use words and form sentences to express ideas. The colonel accepts this explanation because apparently, he does not know syntax or its significance in communication. The movie goes into a complex explanation every time one is required but the explanation is nothing more than a reiteration of the doubt in bigger words.

What is the algorithm of this particular alien language? How in the name of Confucius does Louise or any other linguistics expert decipher the alien written language when they do not even know its place of origin or script that it adheres to. This becomes even more implausible due to the fact that she manages to interpret and use the language in a matter of few days. If language deciphering were that easy, people wouldn’t still be struggling to understand cave paintings and their meanings.

Louise understands the alien language but not Mandarin? Louise takes some time to understand and fully interpret Mandarin, the language of the future, the most spoken language and more importantly a language that can be learned by humans. She takes almost a full minute to interpret such a popular language but alien language that has no reference point she learns in a few days. Makes you wonder how good of a translator she actually is. Her recruitment was equally dubious, the Sanskrit word for ‘war’ can mean an argument or the desire for more cows as she said it translated to. I know coz I learned Sanskrit and Hindi during my stay in India.

The movie shows glimpses of a kid in the future who dies, I guess? Also, why the name Hannah? Her explanation about it being a palindrome makes lesser sense than if she had said it was because she (Louise) loved Hannah Montana as a kid.

The alien apparently gives Louise some kind of soothsaying powers. So was Louise a mutant? Also, did you notice her name is Louise? Could it be that the alien spacecrafts came from Krypton to bless her with superpowers as a gift for dating Superman after she broke up with Hawkeye, err, Ian? This movie is supposed to be about global unification. Does the movie

intend to do so by bringing together Marvel and DC as a first step? Talk about your conspiracy theories!

The movie is confused by itself. It leaves some crucial questions unanswered. What help do aliens need? The aliens say that they might require human assistance in the future and so were helping them in the present. Help with what? What was going to be so bad that the givers of such amazing gifts would need help from the human receivers? The other explanation provided for alien involvement is their role as a catalyst of global unity. Why would aliens be invested in global unification on Earth? What’s it to them? And what do they wish for us to achieve by unification?

The only actual role of the aliens is that they essentially played matchmakers between Hawkeye and Lois Lane and made come across as undiplomatic jerks for trying to defend themselves against inexplicable beings who keep mentioning weapons for some reason. That is a good enough reason to freak out; not doing so would be naiveté. Or does Louise believe all aliens are like Superman?

Why has this been nominated for an Oscar again? I know that most Academy nominated movies get nominated due to relentless campaigning and monetary splurging but isn’t this taking things a bit too far? Why does a movie that does not resolve any of the tensions, is annoyingly slow, dark and takes more time to watch than it does to read (a mere 44 pages, people) get nominated? Lots of breathing on top of perpetually confused faces do not mean good acting which so many reviewers insist this movie comprises of.

PLOT – 7/10

COSTUME – 8/10

ACTING – 5/10

DIALOG – 4/10

VISUAL APPEAL – 4/10

OVERALL RATING - 5.6/10

 What unresolved issues do you have with the movie? Which parts did you love? Do mention below in comments.