Dune: Part 2

Lead Them to Paradise

or

You Can't Have a Messiah Without a Mess at the Beginning.

 

"God created Arrakis to train the faithful"

from "The Wisdom of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

When last we left Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), he and his Mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) were the last survivors of an attack on their new home on Arrakis by the House Harkonnen, in order to win back the all-important spice-mining business, around which the very Universe itself depends. 

The first film ended with Paul's pivotal killing of the Fremen Jamis—his first real doubter of the Arrakis indigenous tribe—in order to become part of their number and learn their ways, and Dune: Part 2 begins almost immediately after that act.

It is clear—even without a viewing of his continuation—that writer-director Denis Villeneuve dearly loves Frank Herbert's story, and, as a result, it's more faithful than the previous versions (the story is so dense, with plots, sub-plots, and arcana that is was dubbed "unfilmable"), certainly in regards to the ways of Arrakis' inhabitants, the Fremen and their relationships with water and the predatory sand-worms—the "Shai-Hulud"—while also delving a bit more into the ways of the manipulative Bene Gesserit sisterhood, of which Jessica is a part.*

So, along with the blistering action sequences, the vast desert vistas, and the Leni Riefenstahl-styled troop formations, we get a bit more of the sociology of the Fremen, their belief systems, their legends...and that, though they may be monolithic, they are not as homogeneous in their ways as in prior depictions. These Fremen actually have personalities, as opposed to the stoic stalwarts they've been portrayed as before. 

That's good. And it gives them a chance to shine (seeing as how they dominate this second act), and provide rich characters for Javier Bardem and Zendaya to play around with, rather than as merely devoted followers to be led. Bardem's Stilgar is shown to be a bit of a romantic zealot, but with enough years to still be suspicious of the legends coming true, while Zendaya's Chani distrusts the prophecies, knowing full well that giving in to a messianic leader is just another form of slavery.

Those are good concepts, part of a couple of the dualities that Dune: Part 2 leans in on—dualities which Herbert chose not to spell out, but merely allowed to percolate as sub-text. And it shows that Villeneuve is confident enough in his work that he complicates it even more than the original author did.

So, there was quite a death-toll among the A-listers in the first Dune, so, right off the studio logos, we start being introduced to the new cast-members, starting with Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, daughter of the Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken, and it's nice that composer Han Zimmer didn't give him any background music with cow-bells), as the Princess notices the Emperor's ruminating silence over the death of Duke Leto Atreides in the previous film; she is the chronicler of the tale, and it's a good thing because there's quite a lot of catching up to do.

We also get to meet Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler, proving he's not a one-trick-pony depending on his looks) the Baron Harkonnen's younger, more psychotic son, who is Paul's final test, and, as well, a character no one's bothered with before, Lady Margot Fenring (Léa Seydoux) who's deep in the depth's of the Bene Gesserit conspiracy.

"I'd wish you the (best of luck), but it seems you've won your battle."

Then, there's one character, who's always problematic—Paul's sister Alia (yeah, I'm not going to tell you), the last child of Duke Leto Atreides. Villeneuve eliminates the two year gap that Herbert inserted into the book, so we don't get to see a walking talking two year old, instead we see the child in Jessica's womb, talking to both mother and brother through her thoughts. Okay, weird, but not as weird as it could have been.

A lot of set up here, much like you could say Dune was merely the set-up for Part 2 (which is accurate, but there was so much of worth in the first one that it wouldn't be a fair assessment). It is nearly three hours of non-stop posturing, gritty action and a soundtrack you can feel in your ribs, with all sides circling around each other for a big pay-off that is, justifiably, a little melancholic. Think of The Godfather meeting "Game of Thrones". It certainly does the book justice, and although "Dune" devotees may quibble with a couple of changes—no two year gap, so no Alia and no Guild and the changes to Chani (which I'll get to in a second)--one can't deny that this is as close to movie-form as we're going to get. It's amazing. It's fantastic. It's a must-see. Simple as that for being as complex as that.

And I want to see where they go with the next one ("Next one?" Yeah...author Herbert wrote a few books!). They've done a very logical, character-driven change to the character of Chani...to the betterment, I'd say, as I've always had an uneasiness about her character, previously. It will add a complication, and a personal element to the road ahead (if they follow Herbert's road-map) and if Villeneuve is willing to already muddy the...er.. sand and stir things a bit, I'm all for it.

It's one of those movies that I can recommend without hesitation, and those are few and far between. And I'd love to be able to eavesdrop some of the post-viewing discussions. 

 

For me, being a fan of the book (and a couple of the others), it's nice to be able to look at these two films back-to-back and say that we finally have a "Dune" adaptation, we don't have to make excuses for.

He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man was. There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: "I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough."

--from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan

 

* In fact, the only thing Villeneuve ignores is the Spice Guild, particularly its Navigators, spice-mutated humans who have attained the power to "bend space" and thus travel between worlds, a necessary component in a story about commerce, and the resources needed to maintain them for power. 

Incendies

This is one of the early films of Denis Villenueve (wonder whatever happened to him?) If you're a fan, this is one to definitely check out.

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Mystery of 'The Woman Who Sings' and 'Nihad of May'"

or

"Doing the Math"

Incendies (aka Fire, although I doubt it will ever go by that name) looked so intriguing in the trailer that when it rolled around, I had to go see it. A Canadian film by Denis Villeneuve, it previewed like a political thriller, when it is more of mystery story and a family drama. But, as it is set primarily in the Middle East, things are only a stone's throw from getting political.

 

It begins with the reading of a will. Twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) are the only ones in attendance at the reading of the legacy of their mother Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal, a very nice performance) at the offices of Notary Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard), who was her employer for 18 years. The will has some odd requests, which is just further proof to Simon that his mother was crazy. 

They are each given an envelope, one to be given to their father—thought killed in battle in the Middle East long ago—and the other to their brother, which neither child knew they had. When those tasks have been accomplished, then they will receive another envelope, at which time they will be allowed to put a stone on her unmarked grave. Until then, there is to be nothing to mark her passing. The twins part ways, Simon bitter over their mother's perceived foolishness, while Jeanne, a theoretical mathematician by trade—"no problem is unsolvable" says her mentor—goes off to find the answer to the mother of all mysteries.

It is then that Villaneuve starts telling twin stories—of Jeanne's trip to her mother's Palestine homeland, and the mother's journey, leaving her village in disgrace and becoming an activist against the far-right Christian militia. As with everything in the Middle-East the stories Jeanne gets are polarizing when she actually does find some of the elders who remember her mother, and her investigation picking through the rubble of her mother's past lags slightly behind the flash-back sequences as we get the full details that Jeanne is not privy to.  Despite getting a clearer picture, the film has so many twists and turns that no one gets the full story until the end, to a solution that negates the basic premise of Jeanne's quest in the grand scheme of things.

Villaneuve's film is a little disorienting—you have to really pay attention as the locales and personae shift between stories, as there's usually a little initial disorientation between transitions—and there is one superfluous section that could have been edited with no harm done to the story. And there is a stretch of credibility that can only be rationalized if you buy into the inevitability of the dramatically circuitous path of the tale. If you can make that leap, it is an interesting mystery that concludes with another—the mystery of the heart.

Dune (Part 1)

As the Worm Turns

or

"So, It's Done?" "It Is Done." (No, It's Not)

 

There have been two previous versions of Frank Herbert's classic novel "Dune"—the 1984 David Lynch version* which tried to be trippy and kinky and ended up looking like any other Dino DeLaurentiis sci-fi movie and the Syfy Channel did a mini-series in 2000, which had a bit more of a bead on Herbert's novel, but looked cheap and seemed mis-cast. And there's the legendary Alexandro Jonorowsky version that cost two million dollars while never getting out of the design phase. "Dune" has a considerable history in both the science-fiction and literary circles (which don't intersect too deeply) and has passed through the minds of many directors and scenarists who have considered cracking it, distilling it, trying to fold it into a manageable narrative. No one's been able to do it, especially the folks who made the ones that exist. 

 

The problem with both of them is those versions were so...white! I'm not being a Social Warrior saying this, because "Dune" was not concerned about race in the story, so much as it was with the politics of imperialism and the pivotal moment when indigenous people rise up against their occupiers. It's also concerned with taking back the resources for which that tribe's land is plundered. And it's about the pressures of a charismatic leader, especially when there is a zealotry aspect to it. And it's about evolution. And ecology. And power. And religion. And myth. And a few other things all mixed into the big sandbox. There is too much of Planet Earth in "Dune" for the cast to be solely Aryan. For it to work, there has to be a clash of textures...and I'm not talking about in the production design.

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) has been having bad dreams. He is the scion of the House of Atreides, led by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) and his concubine (Rebecca Ferguson), a priestess of the secretive and influential Bene Gesserit sect, which has been tasked by the Galactic Emperor to take over the fiefdom of the planet Arrakis, the source of the spice "melange", which has made its way throughout the societies as an essential mineral, allowing faster than light space-travel, hyper-sensitive senses, and higher cognitive abilities. Without melange, the gears of humans among the stars grinds to a halt. The spice must be mined, and the House of Atreides has been given the planet's charge to increase production.

Actually, the whole thing is a manipulation by the Galactic Emperor to destabilize the most powerful houses, the Atreides' and the Harkonnen's who have been the previous exploiters of Arrakis, a role they have undertaken brutally. With both houses fighting to the death, wasting their resources while doing so, the only winner would be the Emperor, who would be that much more powerful with no threats to his primacy. But, for Duke Leto it is an opportunity too tantalizing to resist—melange is the oil by which so much of the infrastructure of the Galaxy depends, and if he can successfully increase its harvest, his House will become very powerful, indeed. Possibly bigger than the powers of the Emperor to interfere with. Duke Leto is trying to buy his House's future, but even he doesn't know—couldn't fathom—that it has already been determined, pre-destined, as long as the will to sacrifice to achieve it is followed through. But, that is out of his control.

This version of Dune concentrates on the political manipulation that sets these events in motion, and it is the only failure of the movie that it decides to keep the run-time down to a hefty feature length (although one never feels it's too long). But, it is also the film's strength in that it doesn't scrimp on the detail that makes the story-telling so rich. One feels that this is the first true adaptation of Frank Herbert's vision of things (it has "'thopters"!—he said geekily) with a genuine-looking epic scale. Spaces are vast and the functionally-designed ships seem like they have weight.** At the same time, it manages to convey the vulnerability of little objects—like people—caught up in those expanses.

The cast is top-notch, putting more emphasis on the characters who will disappear (temporarily) like Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck and Jason Momoa's Duncan Idaho, and focusing on the character of Paul (Timothée Chalamet—I've never seen him less than interesting), at first a callow youth unsure of his place in things, then becoming more of the "man of the house" when they get dicey. And for his limited time on-screen, Javier Bardem makes the most of his role as Stilgar, the leader of the indigenous Fremen (the film ends during a pivotal moment when Paul meets the tribe—a scene that wasn't even IN Lynch's theatrical cut). These flashes of characters will (hopefully) be expanded in any continuation, making one want to cross fingers in anticipation. It's a frustrating business not knowing the future.

That the actors stand out in the epic-ness of Villeneuve's frames (with the masterly expertise of DP Greig Fraser) and don't get lost in it all is a testament to their abilities. You have to be on your "A"-game to compete when Villeneuve gets caught up in his production design, leaving you strolling for minutes enjoying the sumptuousness of the scenery and lighting. He has overplayed that hand in the past, but, here, it all works and works well. No crippling exposition. No favoring the scenery over the characters. The people are figures in the director's landscape, a part of it, and not just walking through it.

And what a landscape it is. This is a beautiful film, whether it's the glittering of "spice" wafting among the grits of the Arrakis sand, or the alligator grills on the sand-worms, or the insectoid nature of some of the tools, the snap of the uniforms, or the vast horizons that bisect the screen, this is world-building and story-telling at its best and most compelling (for a nice sampler of shots check out the video below from the "Amazing Shots" channel at YouTube). 

 

This is the adaptation of "Dune" has been waiting for.

 

 

* Lynch turned down directing Return of the Jedi to make this film. Can you even imagine what that might have looked like?

 

** And if I can add an "anti-advertisement" here for HBOMax. I don't care how big your home-screen is, this film deserves to be seen in a theater! 

Blade Runner 2049

Building a Better Replicant
or
"Is It Real?" "I Dunno. Ask Him."

Prejudices out front: the original Blade Runner is, to me, a beautiful, fascinating, very watchable failure. All of those aspects land at the feet of director Ridley Scott, who directed it to a high, gritty gloss, while not understanding the source material or its theme...at all. That's the frustrating thing about the man. Blade Runner has a troubled history—on its initial release, studio butterflies forced concessions (the narration, which, as a device doesn't seem out of place in a noir-landscape, but the horribly written final version of it was insulting), and Scott has spent 30 years "Lucasing" it to conform with his idea that its main character, the "blade runner"—a title which was bought from another sci-fi property and has nothing to do with Philip K. Dick's original story* or the film (it just "felt" edgy, kids)—was, actually, himself, a replicant, charged with killing other replicants. I don't know why Scott came to that conclusion, other than he liked replicants better than human beings, or he was put off by Harrison Ford's human Deckard boinking Sean Young's android Rachael, or it might be a reaction to the fractious relationship he had with his star while filming. Who knows? I've always found Scott's contention thuddingly stupid, but that's what you get when you're more concerned with the fluff in the air than the words on the page.**

After years of parsing out the legal rights to do it, Scott has executive-produced the much-anticipated sequel, Blade Runner 2049, with a script by the original's Hampton Fancher and flavor-of-the-month script-doctor Michael Green, its original star, Ford (and a couple others we won't discuss), and a new director Denis Villenueve (Arrival), another director adept at visuals if not the best handle on story. Blade Runner 2049 shows him able to tell a compelling story with a strong visionary sense (replacing Scott's vision with the help of cinemagician Roger Deakins), but adhering to the same landscape of an American wasteland, scarred by acid-rain and out-of-control corporate tyranny, where workers are shipped off to "off-world" colonies, supplemented by the latest slave-supply, manufactured androids, called "replicants."

In the world of Blade Runner 2049, cities are dimly lit by solar farms—the priority, presumably, to keep the "Pan-Am" and "Atari" neon signs lit (a neat little call-back to the original as those companies are as buried as "Batty")—and androids are now outnumbering humans on Earth, and—what Scott first (eventually) envisioned in the original that the replicants would soon eat their own—are being employed as police "blade runners" to kill off the replicants that have exceeded their expiration date. We see LAPD officer KD6-3.7 (Ryan Gosling, in his circumspect "you have to read the emotions, I'm not going to show them" mode) taking out a "Nexus-8" model named Sapper (Dave Bautista, who is turning into a curiously intricate actor) and not reacting at all when he gets knifed in the shoulder during the fracas. He's a replicant, alright.

Surveillance of Sapper's isolated protein farm finds that a box has been buried under the property's single dead tree—why would he keep that, and prop it up long after its death (empathy?)—and Sapper's cryptic comment "You've never seen a miracle" are the odd loose ends for the "retirement." He's recalled to the LAPD, and there Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) gives him "a talk", the type of talk a superior gives their street-cop when there's some exposition to be made and context to be given, but the gist is that he's a replicant and he's there to do a job and that job is to keep the replicants in their place as workers, separate from humans, and any replicant that tries to achieve more and go past its usefulness will be put down. Humans get to live, replicants get to serve...but only for a time. You are now caught up with the original Blade Runner, so, no, it's not mandatory to have seen it to get anything out of this one, except for some incidentals.

But, that box. Analysis shows that it holds the remains of a replicant female, dead of mysterious causes that don't make sense, the manufactured bones carefully arranged, like a form of shrine and the tree bare except for a date inscribed in it—a date that stirs something in Officer K. It's a mystery buried inside a mystery and the implications disturb Joshi, who tells K. to forget about it and go home. 

"How was your day, honey?"

It's here that I should probably stop with any detailed rundown of the film, because if I do, there will be some spoilage of surprises, some of which are pretty damn clever and their "reveals" are done quite nicely. I will say that if a replicant is the supplicant to a human, it would stand to reason that replicants would have them, too. But, in what manner would that be, what form would it take, and what would the possibilities be in the interaction between two such forms of life? Where does programming end and uniqueness begin? It was part of the "otherness" of the original and Blade Runner 2049 takes it one more level to an ironic and melancholy conclusion.

Along the way, several complications have occurred. An electromagnetic pulse discharged in the atmosphere in 2022 rendered the records previous to that time unusable—convenient for slowing down the plot, but not so inconvenient that somebody can't be found to trace things back to their source and even replay old software records. San Diego has become a citywide dumping ground. And Las Vegas, an irradiated ghost-town. The Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt after the death of its founder at the thumbs of one of his creations (in the original), necessitating the disposal of that line in favor of the more advanced "Nexus-8" replicants, and acquired in a buy-out by one Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), a visionary with a singular lack of vision, given to internecine plots to keep his supply to the "off-world" colonies (we're never sure where that might be, but it has to be close as it's just 2049) and as good as he is at the manufacturing of replicants, he can't seem to keep up with demand. Coincidentally, the discovery by the LAPD of the replicant bones may solve the issue, and so he sends his assistant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to keep a close eye on the investigation, even to the point of stealing the evidence.

K's investigation sends him to San Diego to meet a manufacturer of replicant memories (Carla Juri) and, ultimately, to a deserted Las Vegas where he tracks down an old blade runner, Deckard (Harrison Ford), who knows more than he's telling. The path leads K down a couple of blind alleys, but by this time, it's personal and he finds himself confronted by the past, and what could very well be his past. At this point, after the elaborate set-up of the previous couple hours (the film is 2 hours 40 minutes long), the film gets simultaneously better (Ford's back! And the film-makers have a grand time playing with Vegas) and worse (a lot of de rigeur action stuff and a couple gaping plot-holes, but then, what's a Blade Runner movie without them?).

Now, some generalized thoughts about the movie without going into the plot details that produce them. One thing about the first movie that Replicants may have a similar physiognomy, but it is never made clear about what runs them, but one thing is made clear in the original—they seem to wear what can be construed as their heart on their sleeves. Their very capacity for feeling, for appreciating life, because their's is so short, is what make them different from the relatively uncaring, shall we say "privileged" human beings who take their longevity, comparatively speaking, for granted. One thing about the first that never really gelled for me is its dressing itself up in the trappings of film-noir. That aspect doesn't really work other than the darkness that permeates the screen. There is no greater evil in human (or replicant) nature in that story that that darkness represents. But, Blade Runner 2049 does have that aspect at least as it relates to the main characters in the story, K and Deckard. 

For K, the decidedly replicant blade runner, the investigation is a journey of discovery. He starts out as a cog in a machine of authority and as he gets deeper into the mystery, he begins to see himself as something more, maybe even unique. His feelings are pushed and pulled, one way and another, during the course of the film, but one thing that humanizes him (if you can use so precious a term) is his relationship and very real affection for his house-mate/partner (can we call her that?), Joi (Ana de Armas), who cares for him, as he does for her, in kind. It is the closest relationship displayed in the movie. But is it love? Is it caring? Can it be named, as such? For both of them, it is real. But, in the course of the movie, K comes to question what that relationship is. As with one of my favorite films about the subject, Hitchcock's Vertigo, at the end of Blade Runner 2049 you question—as the song goes—"what is this thing called 'love.'"

At the end, K is given a much darker truth that changes his mission and makes him take the actions that will finish the film, acts of self-sacrifice done in the despair that what he might have treasured is not so special a thing at all, but will make him fight for what he sees as genuine—not unlike Roy Batty at the end of the original Blade Runner. His world is rocked by the negation of his hope of uniqueness, and he is given a damning realization that he is just part of a bigger system of manipulation, commodified and cheapened by corporate interests, and he is left with nothing of value, other than what he can do to make his life worth...something. 

There is a larger evil in the world that he is powerless against it, and, indeed, he's part of it. And he's an artificial life, a manufactured copy, a simulation of his human masters. How would such a being feel about that? As with the original, it makes me wonder about the relationship between us and our machines. We all name our cars (don't we? Please tell me you do, too), or "personalize" our computers. Is that a way of grafting affection, producing a partnership? It makes me occasionally wonder if my kitchen micro-wave might be grieving that the plastic has worn away from the "Start" button and sees that as neglect. The "Toy Story" series played with that (especially Toy Story 2). So, did Spielberg's (and Kubrick's) A.I.

And Deckard? I still contend that he's human...or else, what's the point? But the film changes him, as well...and the original film, without altering what went before. But, he discovers that, instead of being a rebel, he was nothing more than a lab rat, and maybe that's the difference between human and replicant—he can live with that, as long as he lives.

Blade Runner 2049 is flawed—sure, it is. But, I find it better than the original, one of a handful of sequels that can boast that, certainly in that it, and its director, knows what it's doing. It takes the original, deconstructs it, expands on it, and ends up being more truthful to its source material than its own adaptation.  It makes you think, and like any really good film in the tradition of film-noir, not in a good way.

* "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Have you read it? You should.

** This may seem minor to Blade Runner fans, but is essential to the story's theme about the mechanical replicants teaching the human killer what it means to be human. And Scott's tinkering with the film over the years—the insertion of a unicorn dream (which actually "plays" when contemplating a replicant's uniqueness—or the fragility of a life), the reflective qualities of a replicant's eyes—which is given to Deckard, the suggestiveness of the origami figure Deckard is left by his fellow officer Gaff, and the implication that Deckard, like all replicants—has been implanted with memories—to maintain that Ford's Deckard is a replicant (despite the character's all-too-human flailing about in the film) renders that central theme empty and useless. It's like saying that Charles Foster Kane's last words implies that he mourns the loss of snow rather than the carefree childhood, implied by his sled, that was lost when he was signed over to Thatcher by his parents.

*** During its gestation or production phase, at one point, the rumored "Blade Runner" sequel was to be a series of shorts, either for the web or TV. The seeds of that idea came to fruition with three commissioned "prequel" shorts, which are below, courtesy of Warner Brothers' YouTube channel.

Arrival

Octo-Mom
or
If You Had It to Do Over Again...Would You Have an Inkling?

Science fiction is always a problematic genre, dramatically. Thesis overwhelms character. And character buries the lede. Some of the best science-fiction has been melodramatically inert, its characters cut from templates—my favorite movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, has professional people, but one can't see much personality in them. Events are too big for traits beyond hubris to penetrate. When personality plays into the scenario—think Interstellar—it undercuts the ideas and the scale, making the grand scale of ideas a mere backdrop for the problems of the two little people in a crazy multiverse.

Science fiction asks the Big What if? And perhaps we've gotten to the saturation point where the concept of alien visitation has gotten old-hat since the time Klaatu visited, turned out all the lights, and threatened to spank if we didn't get our WMD's together.

And it shouldn't. Alien arrival—dare we say "immigration?"—would be a global game-changer, causing both societies and sects to do major pivoting in their by-laws and arcana, causing re-writes and "spins" in order to maintain their global and universal pecking orders. It was ever thus.

Arrival has no room for such speculation—the world just freaks out like they would on Independence Day, from fender-benders in parking lots to international posturing and saber-rattling without benefit of resets. Twelve crescent-shaped objects appear hovering over various parts of the planet, the only thing they have in common (as one "expert" opines) is that Sheena Easton had a #1 hit there in 1981.* The press speculates idly, trying to fill air-time while the respective governments evacuate and cordone off the touchdown sites. They ask and reverberate the same questions the populace has: why are they here?; why now?; Are they here for peaceful or harmful purposes?; if it's The Rapture, what should I wear?

The government—all the governments—ask the same questions. But, first they have to figure out how to communicate with The Visitors (if they're merely Visiting) without the benefit of them understanding English, providing a Universal Translator, Absorbascon, or music-activated light-show.** The colonel in charge of solving the problem, Col. Weber (Forest Whittaker) seeks out linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to apply her skills to try and decode the guttural rumbles the arrivers emit.

We've already spent some time with Dr. Banks—a prologue begins the movie with a narrated slice-of-life montage straight out of Terence Mallick of Banks as seen through the life (and death) of her daughter. She speaks over it:

"I used to think this was the beginning of your story. Memory is a strange thing. We are so bound by time, by its order. I remember moments in the middle. And this was the end. But, now I'm not so sure in beginnings and endings. There are moments that are beyond your life. Like the moment "they" arrived.

That narration had me checking the IMDB credits to see if it was Malick or Christopher Nolan who was directing the movie. But, no, it's Denis Villeneuve (who directed Incendies, Prisoners, and Sicario).

Banks first gets an inkling of events when she shows up to teach her class and only a handful have shown up—and it isn't even after homecoming. Their cell-phones start beeping, with alerts, texts, and (I'm sure) questionable Facebook posts. Banks turns on the class monitor to the TV and stares blankly at what she sees. Then, the evacuation alarm goes off. Class dismissed.

Before long, Whittaker's colonel is in her office, playing a recording of the E.T. utterances, and after some initial reluctance—on both their parts—she's whisked away to Montana to one of the ground zero's where the slightly-scalloped ships are hovering 30 feet above the ground. Ferried with her is Dr. Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who's been reading up on Banks, allowing light-hearted verbal sparring about the best approach to talking to the aliens.

"The cornerstone of civilization isn't language—it's science," he opines. "How about we talk to them before throwing math problems at them?" she counters.

The control center in Montana, where they're flown to is an amalgamation of boots on the ground and ghosts in the machine—while the troops are providing security and infrastructure, there are banks of computers analyzing and skyping other countries  reporting their progress—or lack of it. With all that intel, there's an NSA agent, Halpen (Michael Stuhlbarg), who's acting as filter for both communication and hindrance. 

The highlights of the film are, of course, the contact scenes, where Donnelly and Banks meet and greet the aliens and Villenueve creates an curious milieu for these. There is an interesting and metaphorical gravity re-orientation, and the specialists meet the "heptapods" (as they're soon labeled, although, for personal reasons, I prefer the term Krakenators)—creatures that appear like elephant-hided octopi—in an inconvenient, but dramatically-stylized movie screen-apertured tank. Most of the creativity and a fair share of the budget go into these scenes, and the efforts to interpret and correspond are editorially compressed to spare us the intricacies and timeline of establishing common-ground. We get the highlights, but no squabbling over syntax or masculine/feminine articles. 

The "heps" communicate using an inky, representational hieroglyphics, that being a better entree to understanding than trying to figure out the whale-like rumblings they use aurally. Not to get too much into detail—because that's where the most surprises come from—but before long, screen-time-wise, the bipeds get a pretty good idea what the general intentions of the heps are (and it has nothing to do with protesting our treatment of calamari, which is a good thing—you don't want to have to explain the process of deep-frying and try to put a positive spin on it).

It is Banks who makes the breakthroughs, and for whom the heptapods have the most trust—she is, after all, the first one who takes off the alarming enviro-suits to give the "heps" a good look at the fragile creatures we actually are. And more importantly, she does it not through much words and language as action, which given the species is a much more reliable presentation of intent.

Actions speak louder than linguistics, and the actions of the humans world-wide put any sort of understanding—among humans or heptapods—in jeopardy. It all hinges on Banks, who, when things come to crisis, comes up with a unique little talent that comes out of nowhere (the line from Captain America: Civil War came to mind: "Okay, anybody on our side hiding any shocking and fantastic abilities they'd like to disclose? I'm open to suggestions.") and for which there has been no...inkling...previously, and which seems really convenient.

Now, don't get all curious about that ability—don't jump to some conclusion that it has anything to do with the aliens, that Amy Adams is a secret heptapod, or they're the souls of lost loved ones, or anything like that. The twist isn't that clever...or relevant. It's merely a lucky happenstance that she's chosen to be on this team—at least lucky for the writers who might've come up with it just to get out of a third-act jam. That there is nothing that presages it makes it feel lazy...and also makes you wonder why, previously, everybody has been working so hard, as well as negating all sorts of things along the thread of the movie.

"Look! I could be in another Spielberg movie! (I was in Catch Me if You Can, remember? No?)"

The problem is not that Arrival has an unreliable narrator, so much as it has an unreliable narrative. It keeps that important piece of information from us—a sort of weak Shyamalayan-twist that has nothing to do with the circumstances of the movie's draw, and keeps the movie from feeling like an integrated whole. Here, the consequences of a world-changing event doesn't change much in the movie's sphere, at least in the intentions of the movie-makers. It's just a hook, which could have been accomplished by any means, even trivial, rather than cosmic. In which case, it's a bit of a cheat: Arrival doesn't inspire a sense of wonder, so much as a wonder why.

* In case you were wondering it's "Morning Train (9 to 5)," and, no, it has nothing to do with anything.

** Don't get me started on Google Translate®.