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, joiningcults, 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.
