STACK February 2017 Issue 148

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looking [out the window]
at the clouds – that kind
of atmosphere, getting
away from the scope of
the huge movies. Getting
away from the spectacle."
"When Denis and I first
started talking about the film,"
recalls Young, "one of the things
that we were really concerned about
is that, as filmmakers, we often inoculate the
process with our own preconceived notions
about what a genre could be. This genre
was sci-fi but what we wanted was to be
just as surprised when the aliens arrive as
the viewer or the characters in the film are.
We wanted to be as naive as the characters
about what it means to interact with alien
intelligence. That allowed Denis and I to
subject of his brilliant novel
Embassytown, and in Denis
Villenueve's sci-fi drama Arrival,
linguistics professor Louise
Banks (Amy Adams) is called
upon to decipher the visitors’
strange symbols, which
resemble the stains left by a
coffee mug on paper.
It’s a unique and
unconventional concept for a
genre dominated by FX-laden
blockbusters, in which aliens
are more determined
to reduce our world
to rubble than
initiate a dialogue.
Consequently, both
Villeneuve and
cinematographer
Bradford Young were
determined to invest
Arrival with an aesthetic
that would differentiate
it from those films, and
complement a story that has a lot
to say about humanity.
"We created an approach that we call
'dirty sci-fi' – which means that we were
trying to create the feeling that this was
happening on a bad Tuesday morning,”
explains Villeneuve. “We wanted to create
a sci-fi movie that [gave you a feeling] like
when you were a kid on the school bus
on a rainy day and you'd dream while
irst contact with alien life would
change the world, as we know it.
But beyond the obvious scientific
and theological ramifications,
there's also the simple matter
of how we would communicate with
extraterrestrial beings. Close Encounters
of the Third Kind used a haunting five-
note melody, China Mieville made it the
visit DVD&BD FEATURE
Denis Villeneuve’s exquisite and thought-provoking Arrival ruminates
on the challenges of communicating with an alien species, the likes of
which we've never seen before on the screen. Words Adam Colby
F
I based the
[spacecraft] shape
on an asteroid, or small
planet, called Eunomia
that's in orbit in the
solar system
26 FEBRUARY 2017