Arrival (2016) - Present's Future's Past!

★★★★☆

In case you mistake it, ‘Arrival’ is not a typical sci-fi action blockbuster involving alien invasions. Yea, there are aliens, but they’re not here to terminate or befriend us. They’re to offer a gift to change the way we think, and therefore how we look at time and the Universe. The film’s in fact a quiet melancholy drama with a sci-fi backdrop that concerns grief over inevitable losses in life; humanity over conflicts due to fears of the unknown; communications and understandings beyond languages; and how it’s like to break free from time and space!

Denis Villeneuve’s ingenious directorial skills are still intact. Plus the creepy score and the seamless editing, the film manages to keep intriguing throughout. It constantly plays with our concept of time that things must go linearly from past, present to future. The order won’t and can’t be reversed. Neither can you relive the past nor live the future. The opening of the film works like a trick because it makes you feel like those pictures are memories of the past. And what happens next is in the present where Amy Adams’s Louise’s memories of her and her daughter keep popping up seemingly while she’s racking her brains to try to communicate with the aliens! But are those only memories of the past? Could it be that she’s living the future? Right, that sounds like crazy to our logic and perception of time, but that’s what makes ‘Arrival’ spellbinding indeed. The whole film’s like those circular characters the aliens want us to understand. That time goes in circles instead of always a straight line!

There’re films to make you ponder what you would do if you could turn back time! ‘Arrival’ is to make you wonder what your choice would be if you’ve literally lived the future, or say, your whole life. Would you still choose to embrace it as it’s going to be like you’ve seen it? Or would you choose to turn the course? Would you really be happy if you did? Would you necessarily be sad if you didn’t? The film doesn’t explain Louise’s choice in the end after all. It leaves it open to us. Maybe she cares more about what she’d go through than what she’d get as a result. Maybe it’s a bond between a mother and a daughter that a selfish man like me can never comprehend.

I used to often stare up at the stars and wonder questions like, who am I? Where am I from? Why am I here? Now I still do sometimes, not wishing to meet them or anyone else to give me answers to those questions, but to break free from this shell, from time, sooner than later!