+14
Apologies in advance for the meandering rant. I haven't written anything this close to an essay in many years.
Arrival really highlights for me how subjective movie-watching can be. I was excited to see it, but in the theater found myself uninterested in it beyond curiosity as to just what the heck was going on. In one line of dialogue, everything clicked into place. I understood both the mechanics and themes of the story, where each involved party stood, what had happened, what would happen and why. Theoretically, this should have been a thrilling experience, as was a sudden and relatively trivial realization I had watching Mike Flanagan's Before I Wake. Instead, my reaction was along the lines of "Oh, OK," followed by half an hour of waiting for the movie to slowly lay it all out piece-by-piece.
Once it had, I was surprised to hear that another nearby filmgoer was still confused about what had happened. My surprise increased months later when I rewatched with my parents. My dad - a very smart and well-educated guy who had taught me the concept that the story revolves around - didn't get what had happened even after the movie was over. My mom - who had fallen asleep in the first twenty minutes, then woken up and wandered off to do chores - did.
I believe we tend to decide whether we like a movie before coming up with "reasons" to explain it. I remember being annoyed at critics sniping at the likes of Collateral Beauty, Passengers, and The Book of Henry on "moral" grounds or taking aim at their tonal shifts while heaping praise on Arrival and Colossal.
Hopefully this didn't come off as an attack on the movie. I just think this is an interesting subject that my experience with Arrival touches on from a few different angles.