Arrival 2016

Review of Arrival 2016

The movie begins as we see Amy Adams with a baby. Then the baby grows up in the next scene. Almost as old as a toddler. After that, we see baby as a grown woman. A doctor is examining her. Girl is lying on the bed with no hair. And she is dead. Amy enters in the lecture hall. I think she is professor. She starts talking about Portuguese. There are few students sitting and their phone starts ringing. Amy ask them if they want to share any news. A student says, turn on the news channel please. On the news, we hear reports of unknown objects landing on different regions of the world. A total of 12 objects have landed on earth in different locations. Amy is watching news, suddenly university safety alarm rings and whole university is being emptied. Amy goes to her home and talks to her mom on phone. Mom tells her to be careful. We see jet fighters flying in the sky. On the news, we see lots of people in the streets from Venezuela. Amy goes to sleep. Next morning, she goes to university but there is nobody to be found. Three men walks in the Louise office. Louise is the name of Amy in the movie. 

Colonel Weber is one of the man and he says that you have clearance in the government matters. Weber plays a recording in front of Louise. There are some noises in the recording. These are the aliens speaking. Weber wants her to translate it. She has translated for government before. But this time she says that she needs to be at the spot to translates the language. Weber refuses and says he is going to some other translator and leaves. Amy comes to her home and its night and she is sleeping. Suddenly, a military helicopter arrives at her door step in the middle of the night. Weber is at the door. He decided to take her to Montana. Amy packs her stuff and sits in the helicopter. A physicist name Ian Donnelly is also in the helicopter and he reads from book written by Louise. Ian Donnelly is actually Jeremy Renner. Helicopter lands at a military camp set near space ship of aliens. Space ship looks like a black egg floating in the air. 

Amy and Ian are asked to give their electronics and then they move to a medical room. A military person takes their blood sample and give them some medicines to avoid any bacteria attack. He also tells them about the side effects. After that, both of them wear an orange suit for protection. After every 18 hours, a door opens of the ship. They ride in a vehicle to the space ship. Door opens and they go into the ship. Gravity is very low inside the ship. So everybody starts floating and walking on the side walls of the ship. At a point, they reach a huge window. They see two aliens coming to the window and making lot of noises. Amy is terrified from the beginning and is breathing heavily. So they see the aliens and return to the base. Amy starts to analyze the sounds on computer. 

Then next time they again to the ship and tries to communicate with aliens. Louise writes her name on a big card and show it to alien. Same thing Ian does and in response, both of the aliens write their names on the transparent window with a smoky fluid emitting from one of the legs. Their language is like circles with small variations to the design. Each and every word is in shape of circle, even whole sentence is in shape of circle. So in this way, Louise translates many words of aliens. Louise is having flashbacks of her deceased daughter who died of cancer. Louise is also having anxiety problems. One point Louise falls in a chair and Weber asked her to go to doctor and get checked up. But she says I am fine just, need some air and goes out. Then we find out that China is on the offensive side. China wants the aliens to go out of their country. In the next session with aliens, we find out their purpose. Their answer is ‘offer weapons’. So this news got leaked and causes panic in the world. 

Some soldiers plant a bomb in the ship by watching too much news. Then after that Louise and Ian goes to talk to aliens without knowing the presence of the bomb. When some seconds left before explosion, alien pushes them away from the blast radius. Amy wakes up in hospital. Before the explosion, aliens write so many data on the window which was captured by the camera. So after waking up, Amy and Ian look at the data and it would seem like that it will take them years to translate it. Ship also elevates a little from the surface of the earth. So we see Louise going near the elevated ship and a small ship comes and take her to big ship. Louise asks the alien where is the other one. Alien replies that he is in death process. Louise ask alien for their purpose. Alien replies that we need human help in the future. Louise asks but how can you see the future. It replies that Louise sees the future. Then after that Louise returns to surface and has kind of flashback with a small girl. 

In the flashback we learn that she can know when something is going to happen in the future. She says to girl that you will have a rare disease. Girl says can you stop it and flashback ends. Louise learns that their weapon is actually a gift of their language. Aliens don’t see time ass linear as we do.  Holy crap!!!! We find out that those flashbacks were actually visions of the future. We see Ian and Louise together and having a daughter and so their story begins. Despite knowing what will happen, she still follows the path. Amazing film that’s why nominated in Oscars.