Amy Adams’ Arrival will arrive in India on November 25

In “Arrival”, we see Banks’s brain getting rewired to an absurd extreme.

Arrival is an incredible science fiction film. It’s just not as out-of-this-world as his more temporal films.

Carlos Huante tested many iterations with director Denis Villeneuve before they settled on the final design for “Arrival”… How would we react? For the most part, that’s what this film focuses on. Even discussing the film’s quality is problematic.

Amy Adams as Louise Banks in “Arrival”. Shortly after an invasion by 12 extraterrestrial spacecrafts, she is recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), a military officer. Pressure mounts as she seeks to find out why the aliens came to Earth.

Amy Adams plays a linguist summoned by the US government to communicate with the alien life forms in hopes of answering the question that so many of these movies ask: “Do they come in peace?”

Adams is one of the best actresses today at communicating both tired, frazzled strength and quiet but profound emotion, which makes her ideal for her role. But Banks is seemingly so worn down by tragedy that she lacks a soul. An Oscar-worthy performance, for sure. Other countries panic when they mistranslate the heptapods as saying they’re offering a “weapon”, not a tool, but Dr. Banks understands and becomes the first person fluent in the language.

Image has a lot to do with this film, with Villeneuve culling the shots that actually make it onto screen with great care. He isn’t given as much depth of character but the chemistry between the two leads works and it’s a delight to watch them. Ultimately, it revolves around Adams’ character and what she needs to do. Just go into it aware that you’re going to love it or hate it.

If there is a negative aspect of “Arrival”, it is that the movie reaches a bit too far.

The aliens will probably turn out to be ethereal little balls of light that gently remind us that anyone can connect with anything if they really want to.

Adams’s strong work in dramas and romantic comedies shows she is a true chameleon as an actor, with the capability of playing any character in any genre.

The big theme here is time and the motif to represent it is the circle.

It isn’t long before she’s inside an alien ship trying to talk to the “Heptapods”, large, elephant-looking aliens with seven legs.

Of course, as Adams and Renner do their best to try and figure out what these space octopi want, they soon enter in a race against time-both literally and figuratively-as the countdown to China launching nukes at the sideways discs soon begin. And this may be the film’s weakness in the marketplace as it has very little in the way of explosions or high tech weaponry – and nearly no witty comebacks.

However, the film’s high point does not come until the ending credits – only as one looks back does one realize how every piece of the film fits together, and the result is a paradigm shift mirroring Louise’s ultimate understanding of the alien visitors.

“You’re absolutely right about that”, says Villeneuve. The difference is where Arrival goes with all of this. It’s also a much, much better movie. There’s a moment where she struggles with her hazmat suit the first time she has it on, the weight and the cumbersome nature seem to be smothering her and it communicates how awkward and massive that moment must have felt in a way that slack-jawed awe never would. It can either build up to something great, or it can be a huge let down. Audiences after something with more action and spectacle will leave sorely disappointed, as this is much closer to “Contact” and “Interstellar” than “War of the Worlds”. On one level, he’s not afraid to go intellectual on the linguistics front, fetishizing every curl on the aliens’ freakish, ink-blot language and having Banks throw around terms like logograms.

This is our introduction to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that language shapes the way we think.

“We are extremely proud of our participation on this film, which is already a huge success”, said Pierre Raymond, President and Head of Operations at Hybride. Undoubtedly, it’s a film that deserves careful analysis. Unlike “2001”, however, it also made me feel quite deeply. What if she does this? That’s the beauty of it. Banks breaches this language barrier by using a device not previously seen in any science fiction movie to date: a dry-erase board. No one will shrug their shoulders and offer a sigh of ambivalence to the film. Take the opportunity and truly embrace it.