The remarkable details in Denis Villeneuve movie ‘Arrival’
The 21st century has seen the realm of science-fiction cinema taken to a whole new level. Thanks to the proliferation of uber-realistic CGI and the advancement of equipment such as cameras and editing software, the big screen can offer remarkable experiences into the unknown. The likes of Interstellar, Dune and Blade Runner 2049 are all feasts for the senses, with their exciting plots augmented by stunning audio-visual flourishes. Another of the finest recent sci-fi titles comes in the form of 2016’s Arrival, which just so happens to be by the man who brought Dune to life, Denis Villeneuve.
The film explores communication with extraterrestrial intelligence and is based on Story of Your Life, the 1998 short story by Ted Chiang. It stars Amy Adams in one of her best outings as Louise Banks, a linguist hired by the US Army to find a way of communicating with extraterrestrials who mysteriously arrive on Earth. Although it sounds simple, the plot is one of the more mind-bending in contemporary cinema, with language, time and death all explored in profound ways. Helping to bring the tale to life are the likes of Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg and Tzi Ma.
As is typical for a Villeneuve outing, the film is celebrated for its aesthetics. Speaking to Popular Mechanics in 2017, production designer Patrice Vermette revealed that James Turrell’s artworks greatly influenced the film’s look, with them significantly impacting the design of the meeting room in the alien ship.
She said: “I wanted the simplicity and the sensorial experience you feel in a room like that. That big screen was always there in the script, and I used it as an element to unite Louise’s world. For me, that big screen is more than a screen—that room, which they called in the script ‘the interview room,’ is a classroom. That big white screen, [you see it] represented in Louise’s house with the big window. You also see it in her school, in her classroom.”
Whilst the aesthetics are impressive, the use of linguistics and technology in Arrival is truly astounding. Just like the book, it needed to invent a form of alien language that recurs throughout. Duly, the film uses a script designed by artist Martine Bertrand, the wife of Vermette, based on screenwriter Eric Heisserer’s original concept. They then enlisted the father and son duo, the famed computer scientists and physicists Stephen and Christopher Wolfram, to analyse it and provide the basis of Banks’ work.
Notably, Stephen’s software Wolfram Mathematica is actually used by the scientists for multiple purposes throughout the movie. When the code is visible, it actually performs what is being shown, with most of it written by Christopher.
