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Much has been written about the recent surge of personal stories being told through the horror genre in films like “ It Follows ,” “ The Witch ” and “ The Babadook ,” but there’s an equally interesting trend in the science fiction genre as well. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the genre used not only to examine the power of space travel or a post-apocalyptic future but as a way to address common humanity more than futuristic adventure stories. Joining films like “ Gravity ,” “ Interstellar ” and “ The Martian ” is Denis Villeneuve ’s ambitious and moving “Arrival,” a movie that’s about the day the universe changed forever but becomes more focused on a single story even as it’s expanding its worldwide narrative. It is more about grief, time, communication and compassion than it is warp speed, and it’s a film that asks questions. How do we approach that which terrifies us? Why is it important to communicate through language and not action? The final act of “Arrival” gets to the big ideas of life that I won’t spoil here, but viewers should know that Villeneuve’s film is not the crowdpleaser of "The Martian," Ridley Scott ’s big TIFF premiere last year. It’s a movie designed to simultaneously challenge viewers, move them and get them talking. For the most part, it succeeds.

Amy Adams gives a confident, affecting performance as Louise, a linguistics expert brought in on the day that 12 unidentified flying objects enter Earth’s orbit. Despite what they’re telling the public—which is not much of anything at first—the governments of the world have made first contact with the creatures inside, beings that look vaguely like some higher power merged an octopus with a giant hand. Working with the military and a scientist named Ian ( Jeremy Renner ), Louise seeks to find the answer to a very simple question: What do you want? The Heptapods, as they’re eventually called, speak in sounds that echo whale noises at times, but Louise quickly learns that written language is the way to communicate, even deciphering the complex way the interstellar tourists write. As she gets closer and closer to being able to convey that crucial question in a way that it (and its answer) will be understood, the world’s uneasiness continues. Will man’s protective instinct kick in before its science and language leaders can figure out a way to stop it?

Louise also has darkness in her life. The opening scenes detail the birth, brief life and death of a child. Throughout, Adams imbues Louise with a quiet, effective emotional undercurrent that’s essential to the film’s success. This is a movie that gets too sterile at times, but Adams is always there to ground it. Villeneuve’s vision is not particularly CGI-heavy, allowing Adams to work in a way that feels relatable. There’s so much going on in this character’s mind and heart, especially in the twisty final act, with which Adams could have “gone big,” but it’s actually one of the more subtle and internal sci-fi movie performances that I’ve ever seen. And it’s a testament to the success of “Arrival” that it’s her face—not the impressive alien ship/creature design—that people will remember.

As he has recently, Villeneuve understands the importance of surrounding himself with talented people. In this case, two of the film’s undeniable MVPs are cinematographer Bradford Young , the genius who shot “ Selma ” and “ A Most Violent Year ” and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson . The latter’s compositions here are essential to every emotional beat of the film, defining the air of tension in the first half of the film and the moving undercurrents of the final act. Young’s approach is beautifully tactile, using the natural world to make this unnatural story genuine. We may not be able to fully relate to Louise’s narrative, but we can appreciate the image of a child running through a field. Young’s imagery is fluid, unlike the choppy blockbuster cinematography that we’re used to seeing in sci-fi. Most importantly, it feels like everything here is of one vision—cinematography, direction, acting, score, etc.—instead of the factory-produced blockbusters we’ve seen of late.

Despite all of that, “Arrival” sags a bit in the middle, a point when it may lose some viewers for good. The “first contact” act is undeniably confident and the final thematically purposeful scenes of the film are stunningly ambitious, but the pace of “Arrival” softens a bit too much in the middle and one notices the sterility of the piece overall. Without spoiling anything, maintaining the shock value of the twists of the final act forces some narrative decisions in the mid-section that keep us observers to the action of the film when we’re ready to be participants. Villeneuve is a talented director, but this movie lacks a degree of heat that would have helped it hit the emotional and philosophical beats of the final scenes. As is, we often feel like we’re behind the barrier that Louise uses when communicating with the alien creatures she dubs Abbott and Costello. Like she wants to do, we so want to take off the equipment and get behind that screen. 

Having said that, this is ambitious, accomplished filmmaking that deserves an audience. It’s a film that forces viewers to reconsider that which makes us truly human, and the impact of grief on that timeline of existence. At its best, and largely through Adams’ performance, the film proposes that we’ve all had those days in which communication breaks down and fear over the unknown sets in. And it is the best of us who persevere, get up from being knocked down and repair that which is broken.

This review originally ran as a part of our Toronto International Film Festival coverage on September 10, 2016.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Arrival (2016)

116 minutes

Amy Adams as Dr. Louise Banks

Jeremy Renner as Ian Donnelly

Forest Whitaker as Colonel Weber

Michael Stuhlbarg as Agent Halpern

Tzi Ma as General Shang

• Denis Villeneuve

Writer (short story "Story of Your Life")

• Eric Heisserer

Cinematographer

• Bradford Young
• Jóhann Jóhannsson

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• Arrival (2016 Film) Summary

by Denis Villeneuve

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Written by Luke Strong and other people who wish to remain anonymous

Around Earth, there are several unidentified flying objects that appear, and land in places around the globe. Colonel G.T. Weber is the head Army officer placed at the forefront of this investigation. Governmental officials are baffled around their central question: why have aliens come to Earth? The Army is unable to figure this out due to a inability to communicate with them. This leads to us meeting Louise Banks, a linguist whose former aid to the Army has brought them back to her.

Banks goes along with physicist Ian Donnelly, who is heavily interested in the science of their spacecraft and technologies, visit the site of a landing in Montana. The two meet two seven-limbed aliens and find that they have a complex written system of language. Banks (and coincidentally Donnelly) are put in charge of deciphering the language, which consists of circular symbols, all made to look different.

Banks soon finds out some of their vocabulary due to often communication with them and Donnelly. When the moment comes for Banks to ask the pivotal question, they tell her what she interprets as the phrase, "Offer weapon". Of course, this language could not be used smoothly throughout the globe, and China says it means "Use weapon". China and other alike nations break off their ties with other countries, and prepare for war. Banks continues to insist that the aliens mean no harm, and perhaps the "weapon" actually means "tool".

The next day, rogue soldiers place a bomb inside the spacecraft, intending to protect themselves from the aliens' "weapon". Banks and Donnelly, soon after, hastily return to the spacecraft. However, the aliens seem worried. They give them a complex note, and push them off of the craft. The craft flies back into the air as a bomb goes off.

The two continue to investigate the language, but now with more urgency. China, Russia, Pakistan, and more have told the aliens that they must leave within the day, or they will be forced off of the planet. Banks tells them not to do this, as the alien language itself is the tool that they were talking about. The language allows humans to understand the past, present, and future at the same time.

Banks and Donnelly fall in love, just before the camp they are at is about to be evacuated. The language has told Banks that they will have a daughter that may die very young, but she falls in love anyway, embracing every moment of her life and her daughter's story.

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Arrival (2016 Film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Arrival (2016 Film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Arrival (2016 Film)

Arrival (2016 Film) study guide contains a biography of director Denis Villeneuve, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Arrival (2016 Film)
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Arrival (2016 Film)

Arrival (2016 Film) essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Arrival (2016 Film), directed by Denis Villeneuve.

• I Experience, Therefore I Am: A Case for an Evolutionary View of Self from Plato to Blade Runner to Arrival
• Arrival: Dissecting Film language/ Language of film
• The Illusion of Free Will in a Deterministic Universe: An Analysis of 'Arrival'

Wikipedia Entries for Arrival (2016 Film)

• Introduction
• Marketing and release

The Epic Intimacy of Arrival

The alien-contact movie, starring Amy Adams and directed by Denis Villeneuve, is the best film of the year so far.

Arrival , the remarkable new film by Denis Villeneuve, begins aptly enough with an arrival—though perhaps not the kind you would expect. A baby is born, and her mother, played by Amy Adams, explains in voiceover, “I used to think to this was the beginning of your story.” We see the girl’s life, in flashback—games of cowboy, arguments, reconciliations—as her mother continues, “I remember moments in the middle ... and this was the end.” We see the girl, now a teenager, in a hospital bed. Then we see the bed empty.

The sequence—a brief life encompassed in still briefer summary—is surely among the most heartbreaking since Michael Giacchino’s magnificently versatile waltz carried us through the “ Married Life ” segment of Up . And while at first it appears to be mere backstory for Adams’s character, it is in fact much more, perhaps the most crucial thread in Villeneuve’s intricately woven film.

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Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a world-class linguist whom the Army once asked for help with a Farsi translation. “You made quick work of those insurgent videos,” a Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) reminds her; “you made quick work of those insurgents,” she rebuts. The Army needs her help once again, although this time the work is decidedly more esoteric: Aliens have arrived on Earth in a dozen giant craft scattered across the globe, one of them in the wilds of Montana. Colonel Weber would like Louise to come with him, learn the aliens’ language, and ask them why they’re here. On the flight into Big Sky Country, she is introduced to her partner in this endeavor, a genial physicist named Ian Donelly (Jeremy Renner, looking relieved that no one expects him to lug around a bow and quiver).

Villeneuve clearly knows his Godzilla , and like Ishiro Honda he takes his time before revealing his leviathan. As the chopper bearing the scientists skims over the plains, the alien craft emerges, literally, from the mist: a 1,500-foot edifice of what looks like black rock floating weightlessly just above the ground, like a giant skipping-stone poised on one tip.

Accompanied by soldiers and technicians, Louise and Ian enter the craft by means of a square shaft in its base. Once inside, however, gravity releases them and then shifts 90 degrees, such that the shaft is now a corridor and one of its walls the floor. It is a dizzying moment for Louise and Ian, and no less so for the audience, like when Fred Astaire danced his way up the wall in Royal Wedding . As Ian responded to the sudden inversion with “holy fuck,” I was right there with him.

At the end of the corridor they meet their hosts, two giant, squid-like beings that float on the other side of a transparent barrier. Louise and Ian call them “heptapods” owing to their seven symmetrical tentacles, and name the two “Abbott” and “Costello,” because, well, why not? Efforts at verbal communication are unsuccessful, but written language proves more promising. From their starfish-like hands, the heptapods can emit swirling circles of inky gas, each one of them—as Louise concludes—a fully formed sentence with neither beginning nor end. Communication with the creatures moves slowly, but it at least begins to move.

Like Villeneuve’s recent films Sicario and Prisoners , the movie is at once evocative and mysterious. As events unspool, we can sense that—like Louise with the heptapods—we do not entirely comprehend them. (We are correct in this.) As she and Ian try to decode the creatures’ language, they are constrained in their efforts by Colonel Weber and, especially, a CIA agent named Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg). Until we know more of the aliens’ intentions—conquest? tourism? cup of sugar?—Weber and Halpern are greatly concerned that we do not accidentally teach them more about ourselves than we learn about them.

Moreover, there are geopolitics to consider. Eleven other craft hover elsewhere on Earth: Shanghai, Siberia, Sudan, Sierre Leone, and even a few places not starting with “s.” What if China or Russia makes a breakthrough with the aliens first and uses what it learns against the United States? What if shots are fired, bringing alien wrath down upon the whole globe? Already their arrival has enveloped America in a sense of dread and anxiety not seen since—well, this entire political season. Looting breaks out in the cities; Pentecostals self-immolate; talk-radio tough guys demand “a show of force, a shot across their bows.”

The look of Arrival is stately and elegant; its pace, sober and deliberate. This is Villeneuve’s first collaboration with the cinematographer Bradford Young, who shot my two favorite films of 2014 in A Most Violent Year and Selma . The score, by the frequent Villeneuve contributor Jóhann Jóhannsson, is multifaceted and occasionally spellbinding, not least when its low horns boom with menace, almost like an alien voice themselves.

The script is by Eric Heisserer, who cunningly adapted and expanded it from a short story by Ted Chiang. It’s tempting to describe Arrival as “thinking person’s science fiction.” And while I will not descend to such hokey nomenclature, there’s a reason you’ll probably see that phrase plenty in conjunction with the film.

It would be a disservice to describe how the plot unfolds any further, as Villeneuve releases information gradually and viewers will likely clue into the film’s true meaning at different points in its evolution. Suffice to say that Arrival is a “twist” movie, but the twist is more than a mere gimmick. Like Christopher Nolan’s Memento , it is central not only to the film’s narrative but also to its moral architecture—which, like Memento ’s, concerns itself with questions of time, memory, and human choice. This is precisely the kind of science-fiction movie, at once epic and intimate, that Interstellar tried (and failed ) to be.

The entire cast is strong, but Arrival is Adams’s movie from the first frame to the last. I confess that I initially thought that her gifts might be wasted on such space-invader fare, but the performance she gives is mesmerizingly open, by turns uplifting and sorrowful. If you are unmoved by the film’s conclusion, then you are made of considerably harder stuff than I.

As awards season gets under way, there are several promising movies visible hovering on the horizon. But for now, the best film of the year, ambitious in conception and extraordinary in execution, has arrived.

Arrival Explained (2016 Arrival Movie Explained)

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Arrival (film) is brought to us by director Denis Villeneuve, who made movies like Enemy , Prisoners and SIcario. So you can tell that there is going to be a lot of non-linear storytelling. The movie stars Amy Adams in the lead role. Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker are seen in supporting roles. The story is about the arrival of aliens. While the trailer gives the impression of a movie similar to The Day the Earth Stood Still, it is nothing like that. The Arrival movie is based on a book, a short story, called Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. The story deals primarily with why the alien crafts have arrived and what they want. If you go in expecting an action film, you will be disappointed. True to Villeneuve’s style, the movie Arrival is great and makes your mind work a little to get it. Do watch it. Here’s the plot and ending of the film Arrival explained. This is not an Arrival movie review, so plenty of spoilers ahead.

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Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer .  You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

Here are links to the key aspects of the movie:

• – Plot Explained
• – Movie Meaning
• – The Beginning
• – Communication – Abbott and Costello
• – Use Weapon
• – Death of a Heptapod
• – See the future
• – Use Gift, not Use Weapon
• – Alien Language
• – Vision From The Future
• – Predestination and Bootstrap Paradox
• – General Shang Calls It Off
• – Ending Explained: Hannah’s Future

Arrival: Explained

As always, I’m going to lay down the story linearly. While the non-linear storytelling is fantastic, the Arrival movie explanation is easier done linearly.

The Revelation in Arrival (Movie Meaning)

The punchline in the movie Arrival or the revelation in the climax is that the scenes where Louise Banks (Amy) is shown with her daughter, is not the past . Those are her visions of her own future . Yes, they are. You can hear Louise narrating this as a recollection. She is recollecting the events of the “arrival”. I’ll get to how she has these visions later on. Let’s cut to where she’s a teacher in the university. 

The Beginning – The Arrival

Dr. Louise is a single teacher who is a linguistic expert. At this point, she is neither married nor has a daughter. She is known to have helped the US Army once before in deciphering a Farsi text. One day when Louise is teaching, 12 alien ships arrive and position themselves around the world. She goes back home, where she stays by herself, and dozes off following the news channel. At this point the director wants us to think that Louise has lost a daughter to cancer and currently lives alone. But that isn’t the case. She’s just single.

Government orders a nationwide shutdown and as a result the university is closed. Louise goes to an empty college and follows the news there. US Army Colonel – Weber (Forest) appears there seeking help from Louise. They have a recording of the sounds of the alien. He needs her to help understand what they are trying to say. She tells him that she needs to be at the site to help understand the conversation. Weber gets permissions and comes over to her place in a chopper to pick her up. In the chopper, she meets Ian Donnelly (Jeremy), who is a physicist. He has been picked to understand other aspects of the “arrival”.

Entering The Spaceship

They reach the alien craft and enter it from an opening below. The gravity in the craft is altered and is perpendicular to that of the Earth. This has no significance except to let us know that the aliens are quite clearly an advanced civilization. The team goes wearing radiation suits. On Louise’s first trip onboard, she’s unable to say anything as she’s dumbstruck by the sight of the 7-legged aliens. They later begin to call the aliens heptapods.

Communication – Abbott and Costello

On her second trip into the craft, Louise takes with her a small white board to help write what she is trying to say to the aliens. She first writes the word “Human” on the board to tell them what they are. The pods perceive the written English to be a form of communication and respond with a circular symbol. This shows that they have written text. Of course, they use some ubercool space ink to write stuff.

On their next trip, Louise decides to take off her radiation suit so that the aliens can see her face. She now writes “Louise” on the board and points to herself. Ian takes off his suit too. She writes “Ian” on another board and he points to himself. The two aliens respond with two different symbols. They have names too. For the sake of convenience, they name the heptapods Abbott and Costello.

Arrival: Use Weapon

They go through a series of back and forth communication with the aliens over a period of time that appears to be about a month. The objective is to ask them – “What is the purpose of your visit to Earth?”. Language and communication is complex, especially with some advanced alien species, hence the process is long. Humans are obviously paranoid and destructive by nature. China decides to go offensive on the aliens and stop all their communications with other countries of the world. Other nations follow suit. Eventually, every country stops communicating with one another and start working on their own strategy. The last communication they get from the heptapods is translated into the phrase “use weapon”.

Death of a Heptapod

Hearing this information about “use weapon”, few of the army guys decide (on their own) that they are going to bomb the craft. This group of four army guys jumps to a conclusion that the aliens intend to attack. They secretly place a bomb inside the craft. Louise and Ian are persistent and enter the craft because they feel their interpretation of the alien language is wrong. That they don’t intend to attack. When they meet the heptapaods, the aliens throw out a whole list of symbols. Before they can communicate more, the bomb goes off. The aliens throw Ian and Louise out, protecting them from the explosion. One of the heptapods dies.

Rewire the brain. See the future

We need to take a moment to understand what Louise is going through during her interaction with the aliens. Ian mentions a theory about how immersing oneself in a language can rewire the brain. We can see that Louise has been really connecting with the alien language by trying to interpret the nuances of each of the symbols. She’s immersing herself into the alien language and as a result, her brain is getting rewired to perceive reality like the aliens. Here’s the catch about the aliens and their language. They don’t see time as linear. Their script is also in congruence with this, unlike ours.

All human scripts start on one side of a page and end on the other. Either side-to-side or top-to-bottom. The alien script always expresses what they want to say within that circular symbol. It’s all in one shot, not one after the other. Immersing oneself in the alien language will rewire the brain to perceive time in a non-linear form. In short, Louise slowly develops the ability to experience her past, present, and future all at once. Through her learning process of the alien language, she begins to see visions of her future life. She sees visions of her yet-to-be-born daughter. Visions of how she will call her Hannah. Visions of Hannah falling sick with cancer and dying. The director at this point makes us think that Louise is remembering her past. But she’s actually seeing glimpses of her future.

Use Gift, not Use Weapon

The alien vessel, after the human attack, goes up higher. They lose the ability to enter the craft now. Ian has a breakthrough. He isolates 12 repeating symbols that match with the number of alien crafts. They feel that the aliens are trying to tell them that all 12 countries have to unite their knowledge to understand the reason for their visit. While trying to decipher the last complex message, Louise sees a glimpse of a small transportation module coming out of the main craft. She also sees a vision of her inside the craft. She doesn’t understand the visions but she goes outside. As seen, the transportation module comes down, Louise steps in and is taken to the craft. Inside the craft, she meets the heptapod. It explains that she has the ability to see the future. It is confirmed that “use weapon” was actually “use gift”.

The Gift: Arrival Movie Alien Language

The aliens have come to gift their language to the humans. They say that 3000 years later, they will need the human’s help. There is no clarity on the nature of that help that they will need from the humans. But they have identified that gifting the humans with non-linear time vision is important and this will somehow enable the humans to help 3000 years later. To a lot of people, this was annoying because the reason for their “arrival” was not stressed upon in detail. I suppose that is not the focus of the movie Arrival. The focus lies more upon this moment being a crux in the lives of the human race. This event will lead to the unification of the world to make us a species that will live long and prosper and to help other intergalactic beings.

Arrival: War! – One Sided

Because of the preemptive bombing of the craft, the humans are having to brace for a response attack and the base is being evacuated. Louise exits the craft, she’s being escorted out. The rest of the humans are preparing to go to war with the aliens. All the crafts assume a horizontal position. Not sure what the relevance of that is. Perhaps just bracing for impact. They don’t intend to attack the humans, they need the humans to survive.

Vision From The Future

Louise then sees a vision from 18 months into the future. In this vision, all the leaders of the world have gathered together to celebrate peace and their survival over the aliens. The Chinese leader, General Shang, approaches Louise. He tells her that he came to the party only to meet her. That he wants to thank her for the phone call she had made to his private number 18 months ago. Obviously, Louise has no clue what he’s talking about. But remember, Louise is now capable of seeing time non-linearly. She is simultaneously seeing her present and her future (at the party). General Shang, at the party 18 months in the future, gives his private number to Louise. He also tells her a line in Mandarin. Shang tells her that these were the words told to him by his dying wife. The Mandarin lines translate to the extent of “there are no winners in a war, only widows”. Shang tells Louise that hearing these lines 18 months ago made him change his mind. Made him decide against his attack on the aliens. In the present, Louise now has access to this information. She steals a satellite phone, dials General Stang on this private number and tells him the Mandarin statement.

Arrival Movie: Predestination Paradox and Bootstrap Paradox

To understand what happened here between Shang and Louise, you will need to understand the Predestination paradox and the Bootstrap paradox. A predestination paradox occurs when a time traveler is caught in a loop of events that “predestines” or “predates” him or her to travel back in time. Anything that is created within this causal loop is a result of the Bootstrap paradox. To simplify this, think of it this way – since time is non-linear for Louise, she gets information from her future and uses it in her present. On the other side, Shang is probably also learnt the alien language (over 18 months) and is able to see time non-linearly. 18 months later, he understands the importance of giving his private number and the Mandarin message to Louise so that she can use it in the past to change Shang’s mind.

General Shang Calls It Off

For General Shang, in the present, it is a moment of divine intervention. He’s not yet seeing time non-linearly. He’s just shocked that Louise has reached him on his private number to state what his dying wife told him. He calls off the attack on the aliens and announces that he is willing to share all of China’s data on the aliens with the USA. Following this, all the countries fall in line and become allies again. The purpose of the aliens is now complete. They were able to impart the knowledge of their language to the humans. They all leave.

Ending of Arrival Movie Explained: The Future With Hannah

It is finally revealed to the audience that the scenes with Hannah and Louise is a moment from the future and not the past. Through the Arrival ending monologue, they also disclose that Ian is Hannah’s father in the future. This simply means that Louise has seen a future where Ian and her fall in love and have a baby. She also knows that her daughter will develop an incurable cancer. She understands the pain of all of this. But she still chooses to have Hannah. But what Louise perhaps does is that she keeps that a secret from Ian. By the time Louise tells Ian about the cancer, it is too late. Hannah is destined to die. When Ian finds out, he’s unable to forgive Louise for having a baby knowing well that she is going to die of cancer at a young age. In one of the visions into the future, you hear Louise saying that it was her fault Hannah’s daddy left. Clearly, Ian gets to find out about the impending cancer that is going to plague the girl and he is unable to handle it and separates from Louise. The last scenes of the Arrival movie show how Louise accepts the future that lies ahead of her and embraces it.

And that’s the Arrival movie ending explained. Some find it to be a bad ending, others find it to be a confusing ending. Some even find Arrival to have a sad ending. What is your take? What is your Arrival ending interpretation?

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Arrival is a stunning science fiction movie with deep implications for today

One of the year’s best movies is about linguistics, metaphors, and aliens.

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Science fiction is never really about the future; it’s always about us. And Arrival , set in the barely distant future, feels like a movie tailor-made for 2016, dropping into theaters mere days after the most explosive election in most of the American electorate’s memory.

But the story Arrival is based on — the award-winning novella Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang — was published in 1998, almost two decades ago, which indicates its central themes were brewing long before this year. Arrival is much more concerned with deep truths about language, imagination, and human relationships than any one political moment.

Not only that, but Arrival is one of the best movies of the year, a moving, gripping film with startling twists and imagery. It deserves serious treatment as a work of art.

Arrival is smart, twisty, and serious

The strains of Max Richter’s " On the Nature of Daylight " play over the opening shots of Arrival , which is the first clue for what’s about to unfold: that particular track is ubiquitous in the movies (I can count at least six or seven films that use it, including Shutter Island and this year’s The Innocents ) and is, by my reckoning, the saddest song in the world.

The bittersweet feeling instantly settles over the whole film, like the last hour of twilight. Quickly we learn that Dr. Louise Banks ( Amy Adams ) has suffered an unthinkable loss, and that functions as a prelude to the story: One day, a series of enormous pod-shaped crafts land all over earth, hovering just above the ground in 12 locations around the world. Nobody knows why. And nothing happens.

As world governments struggle to sort out what this means — and as the people of those countries react by looting, joining cults, even conducting mass suicides — Dr. Banks gets a visit from military intelligence, in the form of Colonel Weber ( Forest Whitaker ), requesting her assistance as an expert linguist in investigating and attempting to communicate with whatever intelligence is behind the landing. She arrives at the site with Ian Donnelly ( Jeremy Renner ), a leading quantum physicist, to start the mission. With help from a cynical Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), they suit up and enter the craft to see if they can make contact.

It’s best not to say much more about the plot, except that it is pure pleasure to feel it unfold. The most visionary film yet from director Denis Villeneuve ( Prisoners , Sicario ) and scripted by horror screenwriter Eric Heisserer ( Lights Out ), its pacing is slower than you’d expect from an alien-invasion film, almost sparse. For a movie with so many complicated ideas, it doesn’t waste any more time on exposition than is absolutely necessary. Arrival is serious and smartly crafted, shifting around like a Rubik’s cube in the hand of a savant, nothing quite making sense until all the pieces suddenly come together. I heard gasps in the theater.

Arrival is interested in how language shapes reality

The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other.

For instance, there is substantial evidence that a person doesn’t really see (or perhaps "perceive") a color until their vocabulary contains a word, attached to meaning, that distinguishes it from other colors. All yellows are not alike, but without the need to distinguish between yellows and the linguistic tools to do so, people just see yellow. A color specialist at a paint manufacturer, however, can distinguish between virtually hundreds of colors of white. (Go check out the paint chip aisle at Home Depot if you’re skeptical.)

Or consider the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings , but can only be articulated precisely in some culture. We might intuitively "feel" the emotion, but without the word to describe it we’re inclined to lump the emotion in with another under the same heading. Once we develop the linguistic term for it, though, we can describe it and feel it as distinct from other shades of adjacent emotions.

These are simple examples, and I don’t mean to suggest that the world itself is different for people from different cultures. But I do mean to suggest that reality — what we perceive as comprising the facts of existence — takes on a different shape depending on the linguistic tools we use to describe it.

Adopting this framework doesn’t necessarily mean any of us are more correct than others about the nature of reality (though that certainly may be true). Instead, we are doing our best to describe reality as we see it, as we imagine it to be. This is the challenge of translation, and why literal translations that Google can perform don’t go beyond basic sentences. Learning a new language at first is just about collecting a new vocabulary and an alternate grammar — here is the word for chair, here is the word for love, here’s how to make a sentence — but eventually, as any bilingual person can attest, it becomes about imagining and perceiving the world differently.

This is the basic insight of Arrival : That if we were to encounter a culture so radically different from our own that simple matters we take for granted as part of the world as it is were radically shifted, we could not simply gather data, sort out grammar, and make conclusions. We’d have to either absorb a different way of seeing , despite our fear, or risk everything.

To underline the point, Dr. Banks and the entire operation are constantly experiencing breakdowns in communication within the team and with teams in other parts of the world, who aren’t sure whether the information they glean from their own visits to pods should be kept proprietary or shared.

Arrival is about more than talking to one another. It’s about the roadmaps we use to navigate the world

It’s not hard to see where this is going, I imagine — something about how if we want to empathize with each other we need to talk to one another, and that’s the way the human race will survive.

But Arrival also layers in some important secondary notes that add nuance to that easy takeaway. Because it’s not just deciphering the words that someone else is saying that’s important: It’s the whole framework that determines how those words are being pinned to meaning. We can technically speak the same language, but functionally be miles apart.

In the film, one character notes that if we were to communicate in the language of chess — which operates in the framework of battles and wars — rather than, say, the language of English, which is bent toward the expression of emotions and ideas, then what we actually say and do would shift significantly. That is, the prevailing metaphor for how beings interact with each other and the world is different. (Some philosophers speak of this as "language games.")

This matters for the film’s plot, but more broadly — since this is sci-fi, and therefore actually about us — it has implications. Language isn’t just about understanding how to say things to someone and ascribe meaning to what comes back. Language has consequences. Embedded in words and grammar is action, because the metaphors that we use as we try to make sense of the world tell us what to do next. They act like little roadmaps.

You have empathized with someone not when you hear the words they’re saying, but when you begin to ascertain what metaphors make them tick, and where that conflicts or agrees with your own. I found myself thinking a lot about this reading Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers In Their Own Land , which is up for a National Book Award this year and describes the overarching metaphors (Hochschild calls them "deep stories") that discrete groups of Americans — in this case, West Coast urban liberals and Louisiana rural Tea Partiers — use to make sense of the world. She isn’t trying to explain anything away. She’s trying to figure out what causes people to walk in such drastically different directions and hold views that befuddle their fellow citizens.

Arrival suggests that our mental roadmaps need constant adjustment

Part of the challenge of pluralism is that we’re not just walking around with different ideas in our heads, but with entirely different maps for getting from point A to Z, with different roadblocks on them and different recommendations for which road is the best one. Our A's and Z's don’t even match. We don’t even realize that our own maps are missing pieces that others have.

Presumably one of these maps is better than the others, but we haven’t agreed how we would decide. So we just keep smacking into one another going in opposite directions down the same highway.

Arrival takes off from this insight in an undeniably sci-fi direction that is a little brain-bending, improbable in the best way. But it makes a strong case that communication, not battle or combat, is the only way to avoid destroying ourselves. Communication means not just wrapping our heads around terms we use but the actual framework through which we perceive reality.

And that is really hard. I don’t know how to fix it.

In the meantime, though, good movies are somewhere to start . Luckily Arrival is a tremendously well-designed film, with complicated and unpredictable visuals that embody the main point. Nothing flashy or explosive; in some ways, I found myself thinking of 1970s science-fiction films, or the best parts of Danny Boyle’s 2007 Sunshine , which grounded its humanist story in deep quiet.

The movie concludes on a different note from the linguistic one — one much more related to loss and a wistful question about life and risk. This may be Arrival ’s biggest weakness; the emotional punch of the ending is lessened a bit because it feels a little rushed.

But even that conclusion loops back to the possibilities of the reshaped human imagination. And this week, especially, you don’t need to talk to an alien to see why that’s something we need.

Watch: Fewer computer graphics make for better movies

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Kevin McFarland

Arrival Is a Great Sci-Fi Movie—and an Even Better Election Allegory

At the climax of Arrival , when hope for humanity seems lost, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) steals a satellite phone and barricades herself in a room to try to save the world. Outside the room, intelligence agents and soldiers train their guns on the door. Across the planet, alien ships dot the globe, and military superpowers everywhere are preparing to launch nuclear attacks on the interlopers. Banks is at this moment the most capable person on the planet—experienced, knowledgeable—and she uses those skills, the weight of great and terrible information she doesn’t yet understand, to save the world from men who would rather visit apocalypse upon the unknown than seek to to understand it. Director Denis Villeneuve didn't set out to create an allegory for this year's presidential election—but now it’s a painful one.

Based on Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life,” Villeneuve’s adaptation begins just after the alien ships have appeared—a dozen of them, hovering around the world. Louise, a linguistics professor, walks into her regular classroom to begin a lecture, unaware of the ships and the ensuing existential panic that has gripped the planet. She receives a visit from Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), an official for whom she'd once provided some translation work, and who now invites her to join a team of scientists inspecting one of the ships in Montana.

Figuring out an alien language is painstaking work, but Louise takes to it with aplomb. While everyone around her is looking for immediate, significant progress—and failing—she has the linguistics background to know where to start, and moves through the building blocks of communication to try and find ways for the humans and heptapods to communicate. In contrast to her theoretical-physicist teammate Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), she’s the one who not only has seemingly limitless ideas but actually delivers useful results. Her first breakthrough: discovering that both species have some form of writing. The alien language is beautifully rendered, with "logograms" of curving black smoke that can encompass entire sentences.

Louise’s dominant trait is her competence, but there’s an aching vulnerability to her as well, revealed in flash-sideways scenes only the audience sees. We see the parts of her life that no one around her does: a strained marriage, a beloved daughter. Villeneuve, along with cinematographer Bradford Young ( Selma ), has a knack for revealing information just as it demands to be known, while also dangling a parallel mystery about Louise’s life. And composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score, full of choirs and deep bass, highlights both the scientific excitement and the global panic that suffuses Arrival .

What sticks out now, as the film hits theaters in the United States nearly two months after its Venice Film Festival debut, is how pivotal Louise’s role is in mediating a potentially catastrophic misunderstanding—and how unrewarded as well. Unlike the hostile invaders from Independence Day , these visitors don't attack, but simply allow a team of humans to see and communicate with a pair of seven-legged aliens. (Ian nicknames the Montana pair Abbott and Costello, effectively undercutting the potential danger in the minds of the researchers.)

But not every nation takes Louise’s approach, or even supports her efforts. She’s a stellar communicator and a talented diplomat, but many perceive her as icy and idealistic. China chooses to interact with its nearest visitors through Mahjong, a game that teaches winners and losers, but not parity. Fearful of the aliens’ intentions, and unable to do anything but play a game and keep scores, China—along with Russia, Sudan, and others—prepares to take military action. Meanwhile, even the US armed forces, influenced by conservative pundits, seek to violently undermine Louise and Ian's work. Yet, Louise ends up being the only person on Earth who fully grasps the repercussions of the message the heptapods are trying to send.

Arrival is not the kind of science-fiction film that delivers a jaw-dropping opening weekend. It's unlikely to earn more money than Doctor Strange , which is heading into its second week in theaters. But it's as moving as it is cerebral, contemplating the nature of time as ably as it considers the chasms that divide so many of us. At its center is a talented, successful woman whose tireless work goes unrewarded—and in these times, there's perhaps no more dystopian scenario than that.

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Arrival review: a soulful sci-fi instant classic

Director denis villeneuve successfully merges hard sci-fi and real emotion in one of the best films of the year.

By Bryan Bishop

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Early on in Denis Villeneuve’s new film Arrival , it becomes pretty clear that for an alien-invasion movie, it’s actually not all that interested in aliens. As 12 mysterious spacecraft land in different locations around Earth, we see college students getting texted with the news, newscasters describing it, and a linguistics expert played by Amy Adams taking it all in — but we don’t see the ships themselves. Humanity’s reaction is what’s important, and it’s only after the film has slowly, methodically established its priorities that the ships — or "shells," as they’re dubbed — are revealed.

It sets the tone for what’s to come: a mature, thoughtful piece of science fiction that uses a first-contact premise not just as a setup for a doomsday scenario, but as a platform for an incredibly powerful, nuanced look at love, relationships, and the human condition itself. If big-screen science fiction has been going through a maturation process over the past few years, searching for a truly genre-defining moment, it has finally arrived.

Warning: minor spoilers ahead

The films opens as Dr. Louise Banks (Adams) struggles with the death of her teenage daughter, trying to find solace in her daily routine. That process is suddenly interrupted when the 12 shells appear on Earth and the U.S. military comes asking for her help. It turns out they’ve been able to establish some minimal contact with the alien creatures in the shells, but their language is unlike anything known to man. Joining forces with a theoretical physicist named Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Banks goes inside the ship and meets the aliens face-to-tentacle, and slowly starts learning their language and teaching them ours. She’s convinced their intentions are good, but with shells located all around the globe, other countries are having their own interactions, and soon Banks is trying to uncover the reason behind the visit before China or Russia kick off a war with the aliens.

Accessible without ever shying away from the science in sci-fi

That’s the most broad, generic description of the film I can possibly provide, and that’s where I’m going to leave it, because Arrival is a film that’s not so much built up out of plot points and story beats as it's built from emotional and character turns. Adapted from Ted Chiang’s short story "Story of Your Life," Arrival doesn’t flinch when it comes to serious discussion of linguistics, math, or the complex semagrams the aliens use for their written language. But screenwriter Eric Heisserer ( Lights Out ) is remarkably deft in his ability to use those concepts in service of character and theme. The results feel remarkably accessible, even when Arrival is tackling dense concepts that would normally be verboten in a studio film.

Another huge component of that is Villeneuve's approach. The director has been steadily building a rich body of work with movies like Sicario and Prisoners , and working with cinematographer Bradford Young ( Ain’t Them Bodies Saints ) , he creates a beautiful world of cool, symmetrical compositions and ever-patient camera moves. It would be foolish to avoid the Kubrick comparisons — several shots when Banks and Donnelly first enter the alien ship read like direct callbacks to 2001: A Space Odyssey — but that trademarked sterility isn’t just artifice; it’s the nature of the world Villeneuve is creating here. Whether it’s Banks, Donnelly, or the head of the Chinese military, everyone is alone, and can’t find it within themselves to connect with one another, even in the face of world-changing circumstances.

The promise of overcoming that inability to communicate — not just with aliens, but with one another — is what lies at the heart of the film, and it’s an idea that’s brought forward most directly by Amy Adams' performance. She's played a variety of roles covering a range of colors, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her so raw and emotionally compelling. Watching her struggle with the alien language, driven by memories of her daughter, is like mainlining empathy, pushing the film toward a crescendo of an ending that is quietly triumphant and heart-wrenching.

Watching Amy Adams' performance is like mainlining empathy

The funny thing is that we’ve seen swings at this kind of thing before — and more recently than you might think. In 2014, Interstellar launched with the ambitious mission of using a hard sci-fi story to explore the notions of legacy and sacrifice between a father and a daughter. With the talent of Christopher Nolan, a lead actor at peak McConaissance, and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne all on board, expectations were understandably high. While the end result was lovingly rendered, ultimately it fell short — and it wasn’t because the film’s puzzle-like construction or loop-around ending were too convoluted.

It failed because it didn’t resonate emotionally. Interstellar leaves all its grand themes and ambitions inert and lifeless. Arrival 's extraordinary success is that it combines its bravura style and grand science-fiction questions with tremendous emotional intelligence and a heart so full, it’s ready to burst. It’s a film that dares us to look ahead, to open ourselves up to vulnerability and sacrifice, and to take chances and engage with the world around us, no matter what dire consequences we fear may be just around the corner. That transcends genre, or even medium. It is simply art, and at a time when so many seem intent on walling off themselves or their countries, it’s exactly what we need.

This review originally appeared on September 10, 2016 in conjunction with the film's screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival. It has been republished to coincide with the film's wide theatrical opening.

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Review: Aliens Drop Anchor in ‘Arrival,’ but What Are Their Intentions?

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By Manohla Dargis

• Nov. 10, 2016

In what’s perhaps the first science-fiction film — Georges Méliès’s 1902 marvel “A Trip to the Moon” — a group of astronomers lands in the Man in the Moon’s eye. They’re soon taken prisoner by moon men, but a quick-witted astronomer clobbers the king and they escape, with one earthling vanquishing moon men with an umbrella. Humans have been zapping extraterrestrials ever since. It’s so easy to fight the unknown, at least in movies.

“Arrival” is a science-fiction parable in a distinctly more idealistic hopeful key than most movies in this genre, one in which the best solutions don’t necessarily materialize in a gun sight. It has a little action, a bit of violence and clenched-jawed jittery men. Mostly, it has ideas and hope, as well as eerie extraterrestrials who face off with a soulful linguist-heroine, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the story’s voice of reason and its translator. She’s thoughtful, serious, at ease with her own silence and fears. She’d get along fine with Sandra Bullock’s character in “Gravity,” which like this movie leans into feeling and thinking, and reminds you again that there’s more to this genre than heavy artillery.

The movie begins with an elliptical prelude that guides you in but is forgotten as soon as the aliens touch down minutes later. The director Denis Villeneuve teases his way through these preliminaries, with shots of newscasts and panicked crowds, revealing just enough to work up some excitement. In a sly preview to things and tall creatures to come, Louise keeps looking up — at a blaring television, at shrieking military jets — turning Ms. Adams’s pale face into a screen for the movie that’s just starting to come into view. She’s soon hustled off to the show run by the military (Forest Whitaker plays the good cop, Michael Stuhlbarg the bad), having been enlisted to interpret the alien tongue.

Movie Review: ‘Arrival’

The times critic manohla dargis reviews “arrival.”.

In “Arrival,” Amy Adams plays a linguist who tries to communicate with aliens by translating their language. In her review, Manohla Dargis writes: Denis Villeneuve’s newest science-fiction movie is distinctly more hopeful key than most in this genre, one in which the best solutions don’t necessarily materialize in a gunsight. It has a little action, a bit of gunfire and clenched-jawed jittery men. Villeneuve likes big stories with big stakes and he’s very good at working your nerves. “Arrival” isn’t a visionary movie, an intellectual rebus or a head movie; it’s pretty straight in some respects and sometimes corny, with a visual design that’s lovely rather than landmark.

Mr. Villeneuve likes big stories with big stakes, and he’s very skilled at working your nerves. In some of his movies, he punctures the stories with bluntly violent shocks — a stunned survivor seated before a burning truck in “ Incendies ,” corpses sealed inside a drug-house wall in “ Sicario ” — that distill terror into a grabber moment. These visuals can be real showstoppers (the narratives briefly shift into idle); they’re at once off-putting and unsettlingly seductive, and even if you want to look away, it can be hard to. Some of his limitations as a filmmaker are best expressed in the perfect crackling of those flames and the pictorial balance of that shot of walled-up torture victims.

“Arrival” doesn’t need self-regarding jolts. It’s based on Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” one of those unassumingly smart science-fiction puzzles that blend absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space. Part of what makes it so enjoyable is that Mr. Chiang not only raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human, but he also embeds them in his writing through different verb tenses and times. In one section, he rummages around in the past; in another, he jumps onto a separate timeline. The movie — the script is by Eric Heisserer — does something similar with cutaways to Louise’s life, shardlike glimpses that help fill in the whole.

Having been spirited away, Louise is moved into a makeshift military base in Montana, one of 12 locations across the globe where the aliens have dropped anchor. There, next to one of their enormous ships — a vessel that hovers over the ground and looks like an elongated black egg with one side neatly sliced off — she’s briefed and prepped amid furrowed brows, data crunching and intimations of the apocalypse. Once she settles in, the movie gets its groove on. The visitors have set up regular visiting hours for the humans, opening a portal through which a small team in hazmat suits can enter. As their machines whir, Louise and the rest gape across the cosmic divide and into the unknown.

The scenes inside the alien ship are transporting. After Louise and her team move through the ship’s portal, they end up in a large chamber facing a luminous rectangle, a kind of window — it looks like a movie screen — through which they can see the aliens. But the room is also a type of a stage, an immersive theater that engages sight, sound and a sense of touch. Louise’s hands and voice quaver, but her eyes shine and widen as the pleasure of the new — and knowing — edges out fear. And when her physicist colleague, Ian (Jeremy Renner), runs a gloved hand over one of the ship’s textured black walls, his expression suggests the delight of a child at the moment of discovery.

Mr. Villeneuve nods to “2001: A Space Odyssey” here and there in the astronaut-like hazmat suits, the allusions to the abyss (the humans sometimes float, as if in space) and of course the looming monoliths, one of them named Stanley Kubrick. These references can seem decorative, almost ritualistic, with one director paying homage to a master. “Arrival” isn’t a visionary movie, an intellectual rebus or a head movie; it’s pretty straight in some respects and sometimes fairly corny, with a visual design that’s lovely rather than landmark. And, as it revisits some of the uncertainties in “2001” — free will, extraterrestrials, God — it seems to turn inward instead of out. (It does both.)

By turns inviting and opaque, Ms. Adams turns softness and quiet into heroic qualities, keeping her voice low, modulated, and using stillness to draw you near. In a nice reversal of how many puzzlers work, the movie becomes more fragmented the closer that Louise gets to figuring out why the aliens have arrived, what they want from Earth and why. Increasingly, her steadiness becomes the very foundation for the narrative, which serves its meaning beautifully. The movie complicates Mr. Chiang’s story, adding action scenes and political notes, which comes off as pretty puny compared with its larger, grander adventure about a woman who, in staring into the void, leaps into life and finds herself.

“Arrival” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for some gun action. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes.

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Review: ‘Arrival’ is deeply human, expertly realized science fiction

Kenneth Turan reviews ‘Arrival’ directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, and Mark O’Brien. Video by Jason H. Neubert.

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You can stop watching the skies.

They’re here.

Movies that begin with confounding aliens on the loose have been around for awhile (at least since 1951’s “Man From Planet X” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still”) and they invariably share a family resemblance even if the space visitors themselves never look the same way twice.

Where do these beings come from, baffled scientists and frightened government officials inevitably want to know. Are they friendly or hostile, what do they want from us and what are they doing here in the first place?

One of the most satisfying things about Denis Villeneuve’s elegant, involving “Arrival” is that it is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many of these alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart.

Working from a smart and effective script by Eric Heisserer adapted from a cerebral short story by science-fiction luminary Ted Chiang, the French-Canadian director and his team have found ways to make these way-out-of-the-ordinary events seem plausible and convincing.

This cannot have been easy because Chiang’s story, though containing a splendid central idea, is a cool, scientific, even philosophical exploration of the nature of language and does completely without many of the plot specifics that make “Arrival” involving.

Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker star in “Arrival.”

Always an effective, if at times coolly manipulative director (“Sicario,” “Prisoners”), Villeneuve and his team have embraced the script and even found space for emotion. This is especially true in the film’s audacious conclusion, a moving, nervy reveal sure to spark lots of after-movie conversation.

In his success Villeneuve is helped considerably by the finely calibrated performance of star Amy Adams. Though the credits list her as one of a group of top actors including Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg, “Arrival” is really Adams’ film, a showcase for her ability to quietly and effectively meld intelligence, empathy and reserve.

Before we know anything else about her, we see Adams’ Louise Banks as a parent, enjoying the happiness and the sadness that can come with raising a child, her daughter Hannah. Chiang’s short story is titled “Story of Your Life,” and “Arrival” is similarly structured as a kind of message from mother to child.

Almost immediately, however, we cut to the chase. Banks is a professor of linguistics, but when she shows up to teach, her classroom is almost empty. A timely look at the television tells all: an ominous extraterrestrial spacecraft has landed in Montana and the country is freaking out.

Looking like the universe’s largest skipping stone, or a surfboard big enough to daunt Duke Kahanamoku, that spacecraft is one of 12 that have shown up at apparently random locations around the globe, including Venezuela, Siberia and China.

Banks thinks all this has nothing to do with her, but she’s wrong. Because she’s an ace linguist who already has security clearance, the Army’s all-business Col. Weber (a letter-perfect Whitaker) shows up at her door in need of help figuring out both how the aliens speak and what they are saying.

Whisked off to deepest Montana, Banks is joined by another scientist, top Los Alamos theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Renner), and Agent Halpern (Stuhlbarg), the inevitable watchful guy from the CIA.

Every 18 hours the alien craft opens and Banks and Donnelly and a support crew go in and confront the pair of aliens, who they nickname Abbott and Costello (a big improvement over the short story’s Flapper and Raspberry).

Banks’ mandate is double-edged: to learn as much of these creatures’ language as she can, while for security reasons, not revealing any more English to them than she needs to.

This process turns out to be a more fraught procedure than the linguist imagines, and not only because in the rest of the world everyone is acting on pure fear alone.

But for Banks, whose sessions with the aliens are punctuated by frequent visions of herself and her daughter, learning that alien tongue, as short-story writer Chiang puts it, “changes the way she understands her life.”

While Chiang’s story provides “Arrival’s” essential core concept, almost everything else is brought to the table by Villeneuve and his accomplished team, led by gifted cinematographer Bradford Young (“A Most Violent Year,” “Pawn Sacrifice,” “Selma”).

Almost taking as a challenge the familiar nature of alien movies, Villeneuve, Young, production designer Patrice Vermette and visual effects supervisor Louis Morin have taken it as a challenge to show us things from unexpected angles, keeping us off balance visually and emotionally in a very accomplished way.

Adams’ contribution is essential to this plan, especially when you realize that the story is in large part about the nature of language learning and linguistics. Her ability to create empathy and emotional connection, with the audience as well as the aliens, reminds us that the best and most effective science fiction is invariably deeply human at its core.

MPAA rating. PG-13 for scenes of science fiction violence and terror and for brief language.

Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

In general release.

Critic’s Choice. “Arrival.” Amy Adams stars in this elegant, involving science fiction drama that is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many alien invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. - Kenneth Turan

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Arrival timeline explained: making sense of the movie's twist.

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Arrival's Aliens Explained: Language, Design & More

Arrival: 10 hidden details everyone completely missed, arrival: what louise told general shang (his wife's dying words translated).

• The timeline in Arrival is non-linear, with the twist being that the apparent flashbacks are actually memories of future events.
• The non-linear progression of the story allows the audience to experience the same confusion and discovery as the protagonist.
• While the protagonist can experience time non-linearly, other characters follow a linear timeline, with the story beginning with the aliens' arrival and ending with Hannah's death.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival might seem like a basic sci-fi movie on the surface, but it has a very complicated timeline that’s easy to misunderstand. The film tells the story of a professional linguist named Louise Banks who’s called in by the government when aliens land on the planet. It’s her job to ensure humans can interact effectively with these creatures, but she soon learns that their form of communication is beyond anything that human beings are capable of.

Arrival is an incredibly complicated story that he manages to make simple through plenty of clear visual clues, allowing the audience to track Banks’ journey from start to finish - even when it’s not presented that way in the story. The big twist at the end of Arrival reveals that everything preceding that moment hasn’t been exactly as it seems, but upon a rewatch of the movie, all the clues are presented from the beginning, allowing the audience to piece Banks’ timeline together in the right order.

Arrival is available to stream on Peacock Premium and Paramount+

Arrival weaves a narrative centering on an alien language, which can be hard to comprehend since it presents complex ideas about time and perception.

Banks' "Memories" Of Hannah Are Actually From The Future

Interatcion with the aliens has granted banks the gift of prescience.

It distorts her perception of time and prevents her from experiencing her own life in the order it should happen.

At the end of Arrival , it’s revealed that Banks has acquired the ability to view time in the same way that the aliens do: non-linearly. This means that she’s lost all concepts of past, present, and future , with each of these points bleeding together in her perception and happening all at once. It’s this distorted timeline that the audience is presented with right from the beginning, with the apparent flashbacks of Banks’ daughter revealed as memories that haven’t even happened yet.

Arrival ’s twist messes with the audience’s mind at first, but it makes sense once they view the narrative as non-linear. Banks’ daughter hasn’t been born when she experiences these memories, and Banks knows she’s destined to only live 12 years. It distorts her perception of time and prevents her from experiencing her own life in the order it should happen. This ability is shown to be both a blessing and a curse, as she uses her knowledge of the future to bend the present around her will in a non-zero-sum game .

Although some details are evident to most audiences upon a second viewing, many are not. Here are the top ten details everyone missed in Arrival.

Arrival's Events All Happen Once, But Nonlinearly

The arrival movie's non-sequential narrative explained.

What’s important to note about Arrival ’s timeline is that it’s not non-linear in the same way that movies like Pulp Fiction or Memento are non-linear: it’s not jumping between past, present, and future. These moments are all happening at the same time , but Banks (and the aliens) are the only ones who aren’t forced to view them in a sequential order.

When the audience is presented with those "memories" of Hannah’s death, this isn’t something that Banks has experienced in the past or will experience in the future, it’s something that she’s experiencing right now — but it takes the aliens for her to gain access to this. The clues to Arrival’s twist are available from the beginning , as the story opens on something that hasn’t technically happened yet from Banks’ perspective.

Villeneuve is allowing his viewers to go through the same process as his protagonist.

By confusing the audience and placing them within this non-linear time frame, director David Villeneuve is allowing his viewers to go through the same process as his protagonist and gradually learn to view time differently. These moments in Banks’ timeline are all presented out of order, and while they initially appear to be flashbacks, it makes the twist ending much more comprehensible, as the audience is already familiar with this non-linear progression.

Louise shares Shang’s wife’s dying words with him in Mandarin which completely alters his plans and the course of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival.

Arrival's Linear Timeline Begins With The Aliens' Arrival & Ends With Hannah's Death

The actual order of events in arrival creates different ways to view the story.

Although Banks can experience time non-linearly , that isn’t true for every other character in the story. They have to live their lives sequentially, which means there does exist a linear timeline that everybody else must follow. In terms of the events covered in Arrival , this timeline begins with the aliens arriving on Earth, continues into Banks’ attempts to make conversation with them, and ultimately results in Hannah’s death approximately thirteen years later.

It’s this ability to view the story in several different ways that makes Arrival one of Villeneuve’s best movies yet . The audience is initially thrust into Banks’ distorted perspective, but thanks to the clues Villeneuve includes, there’s enough information to piece together the timeline and make sense of this story from a more accessible perspective. Hannah’s death is both the beginning and the ending of Arrival , depending on which point you’re accessing the story from, which makes the movie an endless cycle.

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Based on Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life", Denis Villeneuve's Arrival follows Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguist brought in to establish a line of communication with an alien species that have recently landed on Earth. With the help of physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Banks begins to understand more of the aliens' communications, and it alters her perception of life forevermore.

• Arrival (2016)

Arrival Ending, Explained

Science fiction is one of the genres that I hesitantly approach because I tend to either over-analyze the science or look for a profound philosophical message at the end and I almost always end up dissatisfied. Moreover, when it comes to a sci-fi I am always aware of the fictional nature of the movie and thereby lack any sort of intimacy towards the characters or the movie itself. In that particular aspect, ‘Arrival’ is a brilliant exception. It is so incredibly intimate (for a sci-fi) that it manages to distract the audience from being pedantic about the minute details of the science jargon. In any case, it has a quite confusing and an interesting ending that poses a myriad of questions. Let’s dive in and see what happened. Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Summary of the Plot

The movie opens with what appears to be flashbacks of Louise ( Amy Adams ) at various stages of her daughter growing up and eventually dying young of cancer. The father of the child is conspicuously absent in the memories. In the present, Louise is a linguistics professor at a university. The story kicks off when twelve extra-terrestrial vehicles show up at different locations across the globe. As an expert linguist who already has security clearance, Louise gets an opportunity to decipher the voices of the extra-terrestrial beings in the vehicle that has appeared in Montana, US. Along with a team including a physicist Ian ( Jeremy Renner ), she interacts with the two heptapods (seven-limbed beings) in the spacecraft, whom they name Abbott and Costello. While co-operating with all the twelve teams, Louise finally manages to learn the language of the heptapods.

Ever since her first encounter with the heptapods, Louise gets flashbacks of her daughter occasionally. She got familiarized with the heptapod language and even started dreaming in it. As the global tension intensifies, some countries decide to stop working together and take an aggressive turn against the visitors. While the teams are cut-off from one another, Louise and company finally successfully ask heptapods the million dollar question: “What is your purpose on earth?” They casually replied: “Offer weapon”. For obvious reasons, the word weapon spooks everyone. Louise tries to calm everyone down by pointing out how the heptapods might not be able to differentiate between the words ‘tool’ and ‘weapon’ , to no avail. Louise and Ian decides to go for another session with the heptapods to clarify their answer.

Meanwhile, a few rogue soldiers, aggravated by the media and the ‘weapon’ fiasco, plant bombs in the spacecraft while Louise and Ian are inside clearing up their questions. If the heptapods were as dumb as human beings, this could easily have been the Sarajevo incident that instantly led to a destructive inter-species war. Fortunately, they weren’t. They leave an intricate and complicated message at the end and eject Louise and Ian just before the explosion after which the spacecraft goes up higher from above the ground denying the team a chance for further interaction.

The team has a hard time understanding the last message from the heptapods. In the meantime, things gets worse globally when one of the sites gets a message “Use weapon” due to which China decides to attack the spacecraft. Owing to the dire circumstances, the US team decides to evacuate from the area. As a last attempt before evacuation, Louise approaches the spacecraft and a capsule comes out of it for her. The capsule takes her to the spacecraft and she communicates with Costello. She learns that Abbott died/is dying (Costello gives an ambiguous statement: “Abbott is in death process”) because of the explosion. The fact that it wasn’t flashbacks that she has been seeing is revealed to the audience when Louise asks “Who is this girl?” about her daughter in the visions. Costello tells her that she can see future and that the “weapon”/gift opens time. Also, they are here to equip humanity because they require help from mankind in 3000 years.

Once she comes back to the camp, Louise has a vision from the near future (18 months later) when she meets the Chinese General Shang at a function. He tells her about how she managed to change his mind about attacking the heptapods by calling him on his personal phone and telling him his wife’s final words. To a perplexed Louise, he gives his phone number and his wife’s final words. In the present, soon after the vision, Louise uses a satellite phone to contact General Shang and tells him his wife’s last words whose English translation is basically “In war there are no winners, only widows.”

Finally, the general calls off the attack, heptapods leave the planet and the global crisis is averted. Before leaving the camp, Ian declares his love for Louise and we see them together and married in the upcoming scenes from the future. When Ian proposes the idea of conceiving a child, she chooses to go along with it although she already knows that her daughter will die young of cancer and that Ian will eventually leave her for going ahead with the relationship despite her knowledge of their daughter’s fate. So, once you realize that every “flashback” we have seen are, in fact, from the future, the only major question left is why Louise is capable of seeing the future.

How can Louise see the future?

In one of the scenes, Louise and Ian talk about how proficiency in a particular language can affect the way one thinks. That, arguably, is the most significant line from the movie that explains the plot. The heptapods use logograms which are symbols that can represent words or feelings or even whole sentences as opposed to how we use symbols just to represent sounds or words in most of our languages. More importantly, their language has a nonlinear orthographic script which means that their sentences are not written linearly from one end to the other like we do in every language known to mankind.

When the heptapods write their logograms, they do it almost instantly (writes every part of it simultaneously) showing how they know where exactly the “sentence” would end and how much space is required in between words. The circular logograms in their language have no apparent beginning or end and that is exactly how they perceive time as well. Time is circular as far as they are concerned. There is no beginning or end. No past, no present and no future. Just time! So, they are capable of seeing the future (as we know it), which can be attributed to be an effect of the circular nature of their language. So, as Louise learns the heptapod language, she becomes capable of seeing the future and that capability is the gift to the humans that will eventually allow the mankind to help the heptapods in 3000 years. Yes, the language is the weapon!

The biggest revelation of the movie is when you realize that the apparent flashbacks of her daughter we have been seeing throughout the movie are actually flash-forwards or visions from the future. It is also important to note that Louise starts getting these visions only after her first encounter with the heptapods. The flash-forward in the opening scene of the movie is NOT a vision that Louise is having. That was just a narrative tool used by the writer to lead the audience into believing that every upcoming vision is a flashback. The fact that her daughter’s name Hannah, a palindrome, is also a nod to the general circular theme of the movie.

Final Thoughts

The philosophical question that the movie puts forth to the audience is this: “If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?” Louise didn’t. She marries Ian knowing that their daughter will die of cancer. She knows that he will leave her when he realizes that she knew about their daughter’s untimely demise. From an emotional point of view, it’s such a horrible experience that she has to go through. Losing one’s child alone is one of the most traumatic experiences that anyone has to endure.

On top of that, she will spend every single day of the year with her daughter knowing that the end is near. Even in real life, although nobody knows the exact future, there are times when we are aware of the consequences of our actions and we still end up doing it. It is a very fascinating question that the writer is asking us. Regardless of the philosophical aspects of it, while being extremely relevant by hinting at how nations should work together and while talking about the pointlessness of war, ‘Arrival’ is a thrilling sci-fi experience that provides us the ubiquitous mind-boggling aspects of a time-travel movie all the while being unbelievably intimate.

Read More: Primer, Explained

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Arrival Reviews

Arrival is a work that resents the necessity of violence. However, the film ditches some of the meditative qualities of the bleakness-to-idealism dialectic of the album in favor of making a cold hard stand against war and those who clamour for it.

Full Review | Feb 6, 2024

The film not only discusses complex theories about time, but also exemplifies it by creating a circular sequence of events. Embarking on the mounting steps of Villeneuve’s hypnotic structure is assured to leave viewers spellbound.

Full Review | Nov 20, 2023

With “Arrival,” Villeneuve has hit full stride with a film that contains elements of Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Spielberg, via influence rather than imitation or tacky aping. He is his own man, yet recognizes the genius that preceded his creative journey.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 18, 2023

A masterpiece of scifi films

Full Review | Aug 7, 2023

Leaves us with hope... One of the best sci-fi films of recent times without gunfights. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Apr 6, 2023

Melancholy, mysterious and measured as it tracks the struggle to communicate with these alien creatures, Arrival is really about language and how it functions, how it shapes us and sometimes limits us, and how it can connect or separate us.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2023

Amy Adams’ transcendent portrayal of a linguist...

Full Review | Dec 21, 2022

I appreciated the intelligent science fiction, but also how the film steps beyond genre. It turned out to be far more intimate and thought-provoking than I ever expected. And all of that on top of the superb visuals, art direction, and score.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

The trippy events unfolding out of Heisserer’s screenplay tangle the puppeteer’s strings and play with narrative and filmmaking forces few are daring enough, and smart enough, to wield.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2022

Both cerebral and achingly emotional, Arrival sustains a message about hope and understanding for a better humanity that audiences may need right now.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 9, 2022

One of the most beautiful, emotional and original science-fiction films of the last decade.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2021

The best film of 2016. A motion picture that turns out to be far more focused on humanity than on otherworldly visitors, it's a transcendent viewing experience that gets under the skin and into the heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 18, 2021

Arrival just might be the overall best movie of the decade with the way it cleverly examines what we believe while simultaneously delivering a tense, gripping sci-fi story.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2021

Hypnotic and strange and beautiful - have I said beautiful fifteen times yet? Because it deserves that word no fewer than that many.

Full Review | Jul 2, 2021

An astonishingly beautiful film, both visually and emotionally.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 23, 2021

One of the finest, if not the finest, science fiction movie of the 21st Century.

Full Review | Apr 13, 2021

True to its theme, Arrival itself seems like a premonition of a more tangible event.

Full Review | Apr 6, 2021

A slow-burn thriller that is profound and beautiful. To say any more would spoil it,

Full Review | Feb 13, 2021

We'll always have power structures that are reflexively defensive, but Arrival reminds us many in prominent positions are committed to peace.

Full Review | Jan 4, 2021

If there was such a precedent, this film might be considered an alien encounter procedural.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 4, 2020

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Arrival explained: What happened to Hannah?

"We were so bound by time…"

Arrival ending spoilers follow

Arrival is leading our ranking of Denis Villeneuve's best movies , and it could also easily be our top pick for his most mind-bending movie.

Villeneuve's masterful sci-fi features an unexpected twist and a heartbreaking ending that needs some serious explaining.

With Dune: Part Two soaring at the box office, it's only natural to go back to rewatch some of the Canadian filmmaker's greatest movies, so here we offer some help understanding Arrival . After the ending, you might still have questions about how it all plays out and what it all means.

On the surface, the movie is about two people – Louise (Amy Adams) and Ian (Jeremy Renner) – who must find a way to talk to the aliens who have just arrived on Earth.

But it's so much deeper than that, and there's so much more going on with the two central characters (and Louise's daughter, Hannah). It all leads to an emotionally devastating ending – which you might have been too busy crying over to understand fully.

That's why we're here to explain Arrival and its unforgettable finale.

Arrival ending explained: What happened to Hannah?

The twist late in the movie is that Louise realises after this last encounter with the aliens that the memories she has had – the scenes we have seen throughout of Louise with her late daughter Hannah that we assumed were flashbacks – aren't memories or flashbacks at all... they are visions of what will happen in the future.

The aliens don't see time in linear terms, and having learned their language, Louise can also see things that happen in the future in the same way they do – including her new relationship with Ian, who will go on to be the father of her baby Hannah.

Louise knows that the outcome of this will be Hannah's death 12 years later, and it also follows that Ian will leave her in the future when she tells him she knew Hannah was destined to die even before she was born.

There are signs throughout the movie that this is true. At the start, Louise says in voiceover that "we were so bound by time, by its order", hinting that the story about to unfold isn't as linear as we would expect from a movie.

She tells Hannah in one memory of the reason Hannah's father isn't around: "I told him something that he wasn't ready to hear." That indicated Ian left them both when Louise finally told him her secret.

Even Hannah's name is a clue, as it is a palindrome, reading the same backwards as it does forward – similar to the way the aliens' circular language works.

It's a devastating twist, as the final moments of the movie show Ian and Louise happy, embracing together and looking to the future after the aliens peacefully depart. He asks her whether they should make a baby, and Louise agrees – even though she knows the grief she will later experience, as Ian will leave and their baby, Hannah, will eventually die.

Ultimately, she chooses to have 12 years of happiness with her daughter, even though she knows how their story ends.

Arrival is based on the Ted Chiang short story 'Story of Your Life', which director Villeneuve was inspired by.

"What I love about the story is that it has a lot of layers," Villeneuve told Female . "One of them that deeply touched me is this idea that someone is in contact with death. What would happen if you know how you will die, when you will die?"

We might not have the answer to that, but we know that whenever we think of Arrival 's ending, we will definitely have a cry.

Arrival is available to stream on Netflix UK, and to buy or rent from Prime Video , iTunes , Microsoft Store and other digital platforms. It's also available to watch on Paramount+ in the US.

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Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times , OK! , The Guardian and Grazia , is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies . 

She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids . In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic , and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie .

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Severance Season 2 Arrival Teased by Star Adam Scott

Apple TV+ thriller Severance Season 2 will be 'so much fun,' said star Adam Scott.

• Adam Scott hints at exciting content in Severance Season 2 after two-year wait.
• Season 2 of Severance facing challenges during production, yet successfully wraps up filming.
• Cast reprising roles promises dramatic revelations and psychological twists in the upcoming season.

Severance star Adam Scott said the wait for the second season will soon come to an end . It has been two years since the riveting finale of Apple TV+'s critically acclaimed sci-fi psychological thriller.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter , Scott shared his excitement about the upcoming season, though he remained tight-lipped about the specifics.

I wish I could tell you and everybody about what's coming up because it's going to be so much fun.

Despite his reluctance to divulge details, Scott's enthusiasm was evident. He continued:

I can’t wait for people to see it, but I can’t say a word, but it’ll finally be coming out in the somewhat near future and I can’t wait for everyone to see it. That’s basically it. It was so much fun to make.

The first season of Severance was lauded for its inventive storytelling and how it skillfully built tension through its narrative , making it a notable offering on Apple TV+. With Scott's hints, it's clear that the team behind the series has not only maintained but perhaps even elevated this creative vigor in the forthcoming episodes.

Severance Season 2 Wraps Filming Despite Production Challenges

After a series of setbacks that tested its production crew, the filming for the second season of Apple TV+'s Severance has officially concluded . This news comes as a relief to fans of the series, which made its debut in February 2022. The show, known for its intriguing premise of employees at Lumon Industries who undergo a procedure to separate their work and personal memories, quickly gained the attention of viewers with its suspenseful storyline and complex characters.

Costume designer Carol Deelay took to Instagram to announce the wrap with a celebratory image of the season two clapperboard, adorned with the text, "It's a wrap on season 2." This marks a significant milestone for the production team, who navigated through various challenges to bring this new season to fruition.

The cast of Severance , Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, and others, have reprised their roles, promising another season filled with dramatic revelations and psychological twists . With Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Christopher Walken, and Michael Chernus also returning, the ensemble is set to dive deeper into the depths of Lumon Industries' secrets.

Severance Season 2 production was fraught with challenges ranging from internal disputes to industry-wide strikes . A reported rift between co-showrunners Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman during the first season escalated, affecting the early stages of the second season's development. Ben Stiller, who serves as a principal director and executive producer, reportedly had to intervene to keep Friedman on board. Nonetheless, tensions persisted, leading to complications in script development and budget management.

Severance Season 2: Moments We Want to See

To navigate these troubled waters, House of Cards creator Beau Willimon was brought in, presumably to mediate and maintain a steady course. These internal struggles were further compounded by external pressures when production had to be paused due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, contributing to additional delays.

Despite these hurdles, production on Severance Season 2 resumed in late January 2024 and wrapped up without further incident.

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Religion, Karl Marx said, is the opiate of the masses. Today, he would likely say that the opiate of the masses is fame — the desire for it, the things you have to do to get it, the fragmentary nature of it (the old “15 minutes” is now, in many cases, more like 15 seconds), and everything it’s supposed to bring you. The new fame, the lusty fickle kind bred by social media, is at the center of “ Wild Diamond ,” a startlingly bold and true French drama that premiered today at Cannes.

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Of course, it’s not just her appearance that Liane is selling, the oooo!-look-at-me-I-could-be-in-the-sex-industry transgression. She’s a Catholic girl who’s in touch with sin (even though she has never slept with anyone), which is why, in her eyes, she has to suffer for her celebrity. When she inks a homemade tattoo onto her abdomen, it’s really a penance. (She’s shivering with pain, until she records her Instagram post about it, which is as chirpy with girl power as an infomercial.) But she’s also pushing the attitude that goes with the tat: the hyped aggression, which in her case is a fusion of hip-hop braggadocio and reality-TV confrontation. After all, it’s by being in your face that one attracts attention, and gains followers, and become “famous,” and becomes an influencer, and makes a fortune, at which point one is presumably…fulfilled.

The trick, for Liane, is how she draws the fame-whore theatrics out of her inner misery. Her trauma fuels her outrage. She puts on a show for the world because “authentic” is what sells. The actress Malou Khebizi, who first played this character in a short, inhabits her with a surly dynamism that sears the screen. Liane is all about vanity, yet there isn’t a trace of vanity to this performance, which is tethered to Liane’s every volatile mood swing. Khebizi reminded me, at moments, of Sandrine Bonaire in “À nos amours” — her acting has that kind of layered combustibility. The story of Liane isn’t just that she’s furious. It’s that she’s in thrall to a false god.      

A reality-TV producer leaves a message on Liane’s voicemail. She was impressed by the exhibitionism of Liane’s social-media posts, and asks her to come in and interview for a spot on “Miracle Island,” a reality show about 15 pretty young people living together in a beach house. So Liane is getting her shot. In the interview, she projects the right bad-girl attitude, encouraged by the producer who says, “We don’t want a goody-goody.” The way the shows are packaged, the cast members are encouraged to sell themselves to each other (when they’re not hating on each other). That’s how they become “stars.”   

Yet the family’s unhappiness, at root, is driven by economics. Liane has an employment counselor she couldn’t be more bored with, because she doesn’t want to toil for the Man. No, she wants it all: the fantasy of affluence. If Karl Marx were here, he’d have a lot to say about how social media and reality TV work — how the leaders of the new Gilded Age, which is sucking all the money up to the top, have designed these diversions as a way of hoodwinking everyone else. It’s like the lottery with lip gloss and spandex: a way for the masses to “have it all.” As if being a TikTok dance-craze icon or a reality-TV star, who then becomes an influencer — a nobody who gets to be the corporate flavor of the month — were a viable career option.

Liane meets a biker kid (Alexis Manenti) and seems to develop a romantic attraction to him (the feeling is mutual), but these scenes drag a bit. Then again, the whole movie is designed as a (deceptive) downward spiral. After a while, it appears that the reality-TV producer has ghosted Liane. And why wouldn’t she? There are a thousand girls out there just like her. But the film’s ending surprises you. After all the despair, the piling up of glitzy delusion, there’s a feeling of redemption to it connected to what a good movie can do. Seated on an airplane high in the sky, Liane looks out the window, and the light of the sun catches her eye just so. The false god has smiled. And the audience feels blessed, by the arrival of a filmmaker this accomplished.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (in Competition), May 15, 2024. Running time: 103 MIN.

• Production: A Silex Films production. Producers: Priscilla Bertin, Judith Nora.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Agathe Reidinger. Camera: Noé Bach. Editor: Lila Desiles. Music: Audrey Ismael.
• With: Malou Khebizi, Idir Azougli, Andréa Bescond, Ashley Romano, Alexis Manenti, Kilia Fernane, Léa Gorla, Alexander Noisier, Antonia Buresi.

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Flickering Lights review – how the arrival of electricity heralded peace in a turbulent Indian state

Years in the making, this documentary shows preparations for the arrival of mains power in a village in Nagaland as part of a deal with the Indian government

W ith great patience over a period of years, Indian film-makers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan recorded an interesting cultural footnote to history, happening ever so slowly in the tiny, remote village of Tora in Nagaland in north-eastern India near the border with Myanmar. The Naga Peace Accord , signed in 2015 between Narendra Modi’s government and the separatist-insurgent National Socialist Council of Nagaland, theoretically resolved tension which had existed since the Naga people proclaimed independence in 1947. As a result of this peace process, the little village of Tora and surrounding communities were going to get something very new: electricity.

We see a shopkeeper look forward to getting a refrigerator and her children excitedly talking about the Bollywood movies they can watch on TV. Other women are unconvinced by this brave new world of watching TV every night: “I would rather weave shawls!”

Some of the younger village men are pretty gung-ho about this technological marvel and unworried about the fact that the electricity poles, fuse boxes and solar panels are very slow to arrive, with the government appearing to expect the villagers to put the poles up themselves. The film shows that erecting each pole is a monumental challenge, like raising the flag on Iwo Jima, if the flag were 20 times as big and heavy. Meanwhile 96-year-old Naga campaign veteran Malungring Khamrang, or “Grandpa Khamrang”, is smilingly sceptical that anything will happen at all.

This is a sweet, gentle film with some lovely moments, chiefly the community’s choir, which sings beautifully. With some subtlety, the film-makers allow the audience to absorb the political implications of electricity; it binds Nagaland to the Indian state more, and perhaps all this TV soften remaining separatist ambitions.

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Where to Watch All the 'Indiana Jones' Movies on Streaming Before 'Dial of Destiny'

Welcome home, Indiana!

Already got your fedora and bullwhip ready for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) ? Well, in case you're also a Disney+ subscriber who has been wanting to get caught up on the four prior adventures of Indiana Jones ( Harrison Ford ), we have some good news for you.

Shortly after a little movie called Star Wars changed the industry forever, two future filmmaking legends named Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came up with a wild idea: an action story about a daring archaeologist who saves sacred and supernatural artifacts from those who wish to use them for nefarious purposes. That idea eventually morphed into Raiders of the Lost Ark , one of the greatest action-adventure films ever created, and the introduction of one of cinema's most iconic characters, Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. Produced by Lucasfilm and directed by Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Arc proved that the blossoming production company could catch lightning in a bottle twice, now armed with an epic historical fantasy to go along with their ambitious space opera. After uncovering the Ark of the Covenant in his debut feature, Indiana's epic adventures wouldn't end there. In the years that followed, Indy would also explore a cultist-infested crypt in Temple of Doom , discover the location of the Holy Grail in The Last Crusade , and follow the trail of a mysterious civilization in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . Later this Summer, Indy will embark on a fifth and final adventure with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , which is expected to be his wildest expedition yet.

Ever since Lucasfilm was purchased by the Walt Disney Company and the House of Mouse introduced the world to their premiere streaming service, Disney+, fans of the series have been expecting to see the four original films become available on the service. Years later, the wait has persisted, until now. All four Indiana Jones films will be coming to the service very soon. How soon, you ask? Well, read below to discover where and how you can experience the Indiana Jones saga so far before Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny swings into theaters this Summer.

Related: You Can Now Dress Like Indiana Jones With US Wings Collection

When Do the Indiana Jones Films Arrive on Disney+?

Announced by Disney on Tuesday, May 16, Indiana Jones will be making his Disney+ debut in just a few weeks. Save the date for an epic binge-watch for when all four Indiana Jones films will be available to stream on Disney+ starting Wednesday, May 31, 2023 . That makes for plenty of time for a marathon as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will release just a month later on Friday, June 30, 2023.

Watch Disney+'s Trailer for the Indiana Jones Films' Arrival on the Service

To celebrate and announce the many adventures of Indiana Jones coming to Disney+, the streaming service released the above thirty-second sizzle reel to reveal the exciting news. It offers only a glimpse of Indy's greatest hits before eager subscribers can see the journeys for themselves on May 31.

Where Are the Indiana Jones Films Currently Streaming?

Prior to the announcement that the iconic films would be coming to Disney+, the four Indiana Jones films had another home, on Paramount+ . This makes perfect sense given that Paramount distributed the original four films before The Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm. While the rights to the franchise and future entries in the series now belong to Disney, Paramount still retained the distribution and streaming rights for the existing four films.

Are the Indiana Jones Movies Leaving Paramount+?

Paramount+ subscribers who don't have Disney+ and love the Indiana Jones films can breathe a sigh of relief. The arrival of the Indiana Jones films on Disney+ was made possible by a new partnership between Disney and Paramount. The conditions of that deal stipulate that all four films will not only be coming to Disney+ but will also still be available on Paramount+ for the foreseeable future. Both Disney+ subscribers and Paramount+ subscribers win at the end of the day!

If you already have a subscription to Paramount+, click the following links below to experience Indy's adventures again or see them for the very first time:

• Watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on Paramount+
• Watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Paramount+
• Watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on Paramount+
• Watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Paramount+

How Much Do Disney+ and Paramount+ Cost?

There are several ways to experience the many offerings of Disney+, two of which are solo subscription plans and three of which are bundle options. The solo plans consist of Disney+ Basic, which features limited ads for $7.99 USD per month, and Disney+ Premium, with removes most ads and allows for downloading of select titles for offline use for $10.99 USD per month or $109.99 USD per year. Alternatively, there are three Disney Bundle Options which additionally include Hulu and/or ESPN+. The plans are Duo Basic, which includes Disney+ and Hulu with ads for $9.99 USD per month, Trio Basic, which includes Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ with ads for $12.99 USD per month, and Trio Premium, which removes ads from Disney+ and Hulu (but not ESPN+) and allows for downloadable titles for $19.99 USD per month. Keep in mind, these plans are subject to change at an undisclosed date following Disney's plans to merge Disney+ and Hulu .

Sign up for Disney+

As for Paramount+, there are two subscription plans available. The first is the Essential Plan, which includes limited ads along with the entire Paramount+ library, live football and soccer, and live news, all for $4.99 USD per month. The second is the Premium Plan, which removes ads apart from live television and includes more live sports, the live CBS station, and the ability to download movies and shows for offline use, all for $9.99 USD per month.

Sign up for Paramount+

Are the Indiana Jones Films Coming to Theaters Before Dial of Destiny?

While not all the films will be coming to the big screen before Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premieres on June 30, the movie that started it all will be. For two nights only, Raiders of the Lost Ark will be returning to theaters everywhere on Sunday, June 4, and Wednesday, June 7.

Now, for those of you who really want an Indiana Jones marathon but don't want to sign up for the above streamers, there's one last bit of news we'd like to share. All four movies are available in 4K as a complete Indiana Jones 4K collection and, as an added bonus, Lucasfilm is releasing individual 4K UHD slipcover editions of each of the movies on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. These new 4K editions will cost you around $25 each, and they come with the original poster artwork of each movie. It might not be the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, but they still sound like quite a treasure to add to your home media collection. Here's the link where you can preorder the 4K slipcover edition of Raiders of the Lost Ark :

Pre-Order on Amazon