Regie:
Denis VilleneuveScenario:
Eric HeissererCamera:
Bradford YoungMuziek:
Jóhann JóhannssonActeurs:
Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien, Joe Cobden, Russell Yuen, Nathaly Thibault, Pat Kiely, Julian Casey (meer)Streaming (4)
Samenvattingen(1)
Als op meerdere plaatsen ter wereld mysterieuze gevaartes uit de ruimte neerdalen, krijgt taalkundige Louise Banks (Amy Adams) de leiding over een team van specialisten dat onderzoek gaat doen. Terwijl een wereldoorlog dreigt, zoekt Banks samen met natuurkundige Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) koortsachtig naar antwoorden. Ze neemt daarbij risico's waarmee ze zichzelf, en mogelijk de hele mensheid, in gevaar brengt. (Universal Pictures International Netherlands)
(meer)Video's (31)
Recensie (19)
This is the best film in about the last five years. It’s terse, brisk, clever, and in many ways bold. The best thing about it is that the sci-fi storyline is much less important than the personal one. I hardly need to see it 3 more times to appreciate the unique picture-sound interplay and award the editor a couple of golden statuettes. After it was over, I stood in the flying snow, wanting to do a lot of things, but then I realized that the best thing to do was to just let myself drift through the incredible flurry of all kinds of feelings. I've truly been waiting for a movie like this for years.
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If I were able to think like a heptapod (and if events are not predetermined), I would read Chiang’s short story after watching the film. With knowledge of the original story, the film doesn’t manage to be surprising with respect to what it aims for from the beginning and what it so much relies on to its own detriment. ___ Whereas Chiang gets straight to the point, Villeneuve understandably dedicates much more space to exposition. The first encounter is thus preceded by a comically long “build-up”, during which the protagonists fly in a helicopter to Montana, put on protective coveralls, drive to an enormous spaceship, climb onto a lifting platform, ride the lifting platform (because we would be deprived of one dramatic ride if the platform stood directly below the opening) and walk into the bowels of the ship. The only function of this procedural porn is to prepare us for an essential and epic reveal which, however, doesn’t happen, because all we learn from it is what the aliens look like. The individual steps leading up to the act of communication don’t play any more of a significant role later. For me, the entire film was such a similar unfulfilled promise as the scene described above. ___ The long and slow opening sequence is also unsatisfying in introducing protagonist, whose actions throughout the rest of the film can probably be explained by the fact that she lives alone and compensates for her poor personal life with work (she is the only one who goes to school even when the rest of the world is experiencing an alien visitation). Many of the informative dialogue scenes, flashbacks with the child and the scene in which Louise translates a conversation in Chinese so that we know she also speaks Mandarin, feel similarly utilitarian and inorganic. The coldly engineered approach to the characters, who remain mysteries like the alien logograms until the end of the film, wouldn’t matter so much if it wasn’t in conflict with the melodramatic level of the narrative, which is based on the relationships and motivations of the protagonists and becomes dominant in the end (I consider the replacement of an accident, which perhaps could have been prevented, with an incurable disease, which can only be accepted as an inevitability according to melodramatic conventions, to be quite essential). ___ In the short story, a theory that is partially revealed is continuously applied to a universally comprehensible story whose main purpose is to make the heptapods’ way of thinking comprehensible. The aim is thus not to move the reader, but to help them understand how “it” all works. Conversely, the newcomers attempt to offer emotional rather than intellectual satisfaction, but they’re not very successful. However, Arrival is still a skilfully made sci-fi movie about the importance of (mis)understanding, though it is too reminiscent of Interstellar due to its expository dialogue, extremely serious tone and cold visual style, but I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was with the short story. Among other things, that is due to how doggedly it tries to astonish the viewer. Postscript: If the solution presented by the film for reuniting a divided world is the only one possible, then we’re pretty much fucked. 70%
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Especially as an admirer of Denis Villeneuve, I regret that, in my opinion, Arrival stutters a little in the narrative
entwinement of its two storylines. Louise’s life melodrama is powerful and the movie uses it to relay a more meaningful and tangible philosophical message than all other sci-fi movies from recent years (including the similarly intimate Gravity
and Nolan’s bombastic brainless spectacle). This storyline won’t let you keep your eyes dry. But its interaction with the
scientific thriller storyline about communication with aliens, whose purpose is to spur the viewer’s curiosity, bogs down
in the last third. And not just because of the unnecessary, distracting detours, such as a group of rebel soldiers attacking
an alien ship, but by failing to successfully combine the two narrative planes that are supposed to perfectly complement
each other and knock out viewers by making some powerful point in climax. On the first viewing, I didn’t find the point
all that breathtaking, while on the second viewing I, quite paradoxically, enjoyed Louise’s visions more as I knew what
they meant thanks to prior knowledge of the ending. Neither of the viewings, though, brought me the emotional and
intellectual ecstasy described by most of my fellow reviewers and which I’d frankly like to experience. The soundtrack and atmosphere are incredible, and Amy Adams is fantastic.
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A monumental, reflective, humanistic, moving sci-fi film. Exactly what Interstellar desperately wanted to be, but failed to achieve. Arrival is not without its minor issues, about which I may write later (IMHO, the way the script addresses the communication between the different world teams during the research is a little confusing), but the goosebumps at the end overcome all that.
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I would never have believed that a sci-fi film could say more about the nature of people in general than the hundreds of other psychological films that have graced cinema screens. This a cinema event with capital E, I've been waiting for sci-fi like this since Zemeckis's excellent Contact in 1997. And at the same time it's a litmus test of our population, whether you're idiots (like the guys two rows behind me, who spent the whole movie making jokes and unknowingly poking fun at their own idiocy) or sensitive people who can appreciate something like this. And Amy Adams is awesome.
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