STACK #148 Feb 2017

DVD&BD FEATURE

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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

irst contact with alien life would change the world, as we know it. But beyond the obvious scientific

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

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

are more determined to reduce our world to rubble than initiate a dialogue. Consequently, both Villeneuve and cinematographer Bradford Young were determined to invest

I based the [spacecraft] shape on an asteroid, or small planet, called Eunomia that's in orbit in the solar system

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

Arrival with an aesthetic that would differentiate it from those films, and complement a story that has a lot to say about humanity.

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

"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

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FEBRUARY 2017

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