Ah, finally, it has arrived...
Arrival was my
#3. Earlier in the thread, I wrote an account of my theater experience with
Gravity, and that we had seen the film with another couple we know. A year after that, we all decided to try going to the movies together again, this time, with a sure-to-be-a-hit alien invasion flick. Talk about deja-vu! About half-way through the film, the husband was checking his watch, and the wife was shifting around in her seat. In their defense,
Arrival is a slow burn of a film. I can see why it would bore some viewers. It's one of these films that you can really sit and think about as you watch it, with sparse dialogue and a slow tension that builds as the film moves along. The situation surrounding the main character informs a somber atmosphere. As with
Gravity, someone in my family had recently passed, this time my wife's father, so she was greatly affected by this a film, and its wonderful, subtle approach to treasuring the time we have with our loved ones, even if, and
especially when it gets cut short. The couple? The didn't like it. From that point onward, when we watch films with these folks, we chose lighter, more fun fare.
The direction and scene construction in
Arrival film is superb. The term Hitchcockian gets applied a lot to films, but Arrival is one of the only films in recent memory to which that label is justified. Hitch was famous for his approach to what he called audience manipulation, which he saw as a sort of cinematic slight of hand, whereby the audience was subtly steered into creating their own narrative as to what was going on. Afterward, at some point, Hitch would pull the curtain back and expose what was really going on, at which time the viewer would realize what they thought was happening was never really the case.
There be spoilers ahead!
Villeneuve uses this technique right from the jump, and at least with this viewer, it worked perfectly. After a heart-wrenching opening montage, we see Louise begin to go through her day, and she is sort of adrift and detached, someone just going through the motions of a life that is no longer worth living. it only makes sense that we are watching the aftermath of her family tragedy. Her linguistics class is disturbed by phone notifications and fidgeting students, one of which asks her to turn on the news. Everything that unfolds after this seems like a linear chain of events concerned with the arrival of, and eventual study of multiple alien spacecraft that position themselves around the planet. The use of color highlights greys and cold steel blues, with darkness and misery closing around Louise from all sides, and she seems fairly unconcerned with what is going on until she is paid a visit by some military personnel who wish to recruit her in an effort to help learn to communicate with the aliens. Even this doesn't seem to stir much emotion or reaction from Louise. Why should it? She has lost her daughter, and is a shell of a person.
Of course, this isn't the case at all. Anyone who has seen the film knows that what eventually unfolds is a beautiful denouement that reveals it self in an emotional moment of clarity that the audience experiences along with Louise: All the events of the
Arrival were before Louise's lost child was even conceived. The final, almost poetic scenes reveal her choice to proceed with the impending romance and eventual birth of her child, even though she has seen the future, and knows her child's life will be fleeting. She chooses to spend what little time she can with her child, rather than to never know the love shared between parent and child.
Add to this affecting emotional storytelling spectacular cinematography, a haunting score, excellent acting from all involved, and a creative take on alien design, and you have what is in my opinion, not only one of the very best of the decade, but one of the best science fiction films of all time. As with
Gravity, This film should probably slide up a slot on my ballot, and my #1 film is perhaps better placed in my Top 10 rather than my Top 3, but I wanted to get extra points in for a film that looks like it will now make Top 10 overall.
I re-watched
The Wolf of Wall Street before ballot submission, and while I like some of the performances, and of course Scorsese's energy in the film making, some of the scenes are too over the top (the lude scene with Jonah Hill especially), it's a bit overlong, and ultimately, ended up getting cut fairly early from my ballot.