Do, however, expect computer generated imagery; wooden characters; emotional set-ups without the resolution one expects from well conceived plots; a muddled, irresolute ending; and the occasional not-so-well-veiled political jab.\u00a0 Miss Pritchard is tempted to use a non-linear critique in this non-linear film to give you a taste of the over-arching plot mechanism; but, that would muddy the waters too much and her reputation for impeccable English would be sullied beyond redemption: \u00a0Arrival (2016; PG-13; Denis Villeneuve, director) (link to IMDb).\u00a0 For a plot summary\u2026click here.\u00a0 (Please note this review contains spoilers.)![\"\"](\"https:\/\/schoolofvice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Arrival-small.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Let us get down to brass tacks.\u00a0 Arrival is a long, politically correct and tendentious homage to the cinematic art of self-indulgence.\u00a0 From the get-go, viewers should be alert to gratuitous emotional manipulation with a sick child whom we never actually get to know.\u00a0 In essence, the child is without personality and works as a foil for her mother\u2019s perfunctory psycho-drama.\u00a0 When nothing else comes to the screenwriter\u2019s mind (screenwriter, Eric Heisserer – A Nightmare on Elm Street), put a kid – any kid – in mortal danger, assume emotional devastation in the parents, and work from there.\u00a0 Of course, the child\u2019s illness is terminal and presented as something that can\u2019t be pinned on anything or anybody except an unfeeling and indifferent universe.\u00a0 Yet can it?\u00a0 Not to worry, in the topsy-turvy world created by Arrival, not even premature death registers any emotional depth.\u00a0 Can\u2019t achieve any degree of gravitas with the death of a child?\u00a0 Very well then\u2026put the entire planet in danger too!\u00a0 Maybe that will elevate the needle on the cinematic drama meter.\u00a0 Alas, no.\u00a0 The World-in-peril doesn\u2019t register much either.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/schoolofvice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/human-300x224.jpg\")
Arrival seems to have been cobbled together from many other films; a cinematic element from this movie here and a dramatic moment from another there.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the whole does not work from the parts.\u00a0 Besides the previously mentioned non-linear format, the other mechanism in use is what Miss Pritchard calls the \u201cmany plot elements in the air all at once and wait for the final few minutes for resolution\u201d style of story-telling.\u00a0 Other films employing this picture-puzzle framing include Adaptation (2002) and Barton Fink (1991).\u00a0 Both of these films deal with the creative process and what artists go through psychologically and emotionally to give birth, as it were, to their works of art.\u00a0 Both films involve a protagonist with creative block struggling with their creative forces which manifest in odd and unexpected ways.\u00a0 Each protagonist confronts whatever bedevils their emotive juices and arrives at satisfying dramatic and psychological fulfillment.\u00a0 While thematically similar, the story-telling is so varied each to the other, the films stand on their own.\u00a0 In other words, the roads taken are so varied as to make an interesting journey even though the final destination is similar.<\/p>\n
Elements pillaged from other films would be the\u2026<\/p>\n
- \n
- Communal Kumbaya spirituality from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).<\/li>\n
- The world working together to a common purpose in Pacific Rim (2013).<\/li>\n
- Audience alerted to a different physics by characters in an altered gravity from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).<\/li>\n
- World on the brink of destruction in War of the Worlds (1953).<\/li>\n
- First encounter in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).<\/li>\n
- Non-linear time line in Memento (2000).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
(By the way, Miss Pritchard recommends all of these.)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/schoolofvice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/being-born-300x124.png\")
While Adaptation and Barton Fink deal with the creative process, Arrival deals in the procreative.\u00a0 Indeed.\u00a0 Arrival is ultimately about the emotional entanglement involved with having children.\u00a0 Or, rather, it\u2019s supposed to be about the emotional entanglement associated with having children.\u00a0 The treatment in Arrival is so superficial and cursory it\u2019s hard to generate any empathy for Louise or her decision to have a child knowing full well, tragedy lies ahead.\u00a0 And, while we\u2019re bending time and space, forget the feelings of the father.\u00a0 Forget the feelings of the child too.\u00a0 The father and the child\u2019s feelings don\u2019t register either with Louis or apparently the screenwriter. \u00a0Nor is it supposed to register, apparently, since they\u2019re scarcely touched on. This might be another politically correct element in the oh-so au courant zeitgeist of women going it alone with child bearing and rearing.\u00a0 We say might because Miss Pritchard is reluctant to give the writer credit for even that much self-awareness.<\/p>\nForget the space aliens.\u00a0 Forget seeing all of time laid out in front you.\u00a0 Forget the non-linear plot line.\u00a0 The movie isn\u2019t science fiction.\u00a0 It\u2019s a half baked morality play built around a flimsy structure with a sciency backdrop.\u00a0 The bending of time is invoked as an emotional get-out-of-jail-free card for the self-involved mother and protagonist Louise.\u00a0 Her side-kick, Ian, is a theoretical physicist who does little theorizing and has the thematic function of a door-stop.\u00a0 Also, Louise the linguist takes a very long time to arrive at even a basic form of communication with the alien visitors. Our linguist consultants and common experience tell us a basic understanding between two people with no common language would take a matter of minutes rather than hours as is presented in Arrival.
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/schoolofvice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Elvis-and-Costello-300x126.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPolitical jabs come in the form of a not-so-well camouflaged Rush Limbaugh providing the political inspiration for a home-spun terror attack on the aliens nicknamed Abbott and Costello.\u00a0 In the spirit of full disclosure, Miss Pritchard abhors current political references in works of fiction.\u00a0 It functions like a dead-man\u2019s switch in her mind.\u00a0 One can also assume the aliens would have equally superficial and dismissive pet-names for Louise and Ian too.\u00a0 Why wouldn\u2019t they?\u00a0 As representatives of humanity, they leave a great deal to be desired.\u00a0 Miss Pritchard does give one positive nod to Forrest Whittaker as Colonel Weber for bringing a small degree of dignity to an otherwise limp and lifeless morality play.<\/p>\n
As far as rating systems are concerned, Miss Pritchard does not use them.\u00a0 Feel free to employ your own scale utilizing fruits, vegetables, stars, points of light or what have you.\u00a0 Arrival deserves none.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don\u2019t expect much.\u00a0 Expect very little, in fact…<\/strong><\/p>\n
Do, however, expect computer generated imagery; wooden characters; emotional set-ups without the resolution one expects from well conceived plots; a muddled, irresolute ending; and the occasional not-so-well-veiled political jab.\u00a0 Miss Pritchard is tempted to use a non-linear critique in this non-linear film to give you a taste of the over-arching plot mechanism; but, that would muddy the waters too much and her reputation for impeccable English would be…… <\/p>\n