Damilola Akinboro and Shaharaim Gill: Anatomy of a Scene - ARRIVAL

Posted by Oluwadamilola Akinboro in Reel Reading · Pahomov/Wust · B Band on Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 11:00 pm

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FQy7CeI3XqgC3rojmjXZ2nHwwHHFJU2w/view?usp=sharing

Damilola: Arrival is a sci-fi thriller movie that was released on November 11, 2016. It stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks who is leading “an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors.”

Damilola: Arrival is a fantastic film with beautiful cinematography and great acting, especially from Amy Adams. The direction by Denis Villeneuve is amazing in the way he’s able to convey the themes and meaning of the story and bring a unique perspective to the “alien invasion” sci-fi genre. Many critics agree too. Brian Tallerico wrote a review for rogerebert.com and said “- this is ambitious, accomplished filmmaking that deserves an audience. It’s a film that forces viewers to reconsider that which makes us truly human and the impact of grief on that timeline of existence. At its best, and largely through Adams’ performance, the film proposes that we’ve all had those days in which communication breaks down and fear over the unknown sets in. And it is the best of us who persevere, get up from being knocked down, and repair that which is broken.”

Shaharaim: Alissa Wilkinson wrote a review for Vox and said: “This is the basic insight of Arrival: That if we were to encounter a culture so radically different from our own that simple matters we take for granted as part of the world as it is were radically shifted, we could not simply gather data, sort out grammar, and make conclusions. We’d have to either absorb a different way of seeing, despite our fear, or risk everything.”

Damilola: There are so many scenes for us to show why this movie is great, but one significant scene we chose was this…

Shaharaim: From the beginning, it starts with this bass-heavy music score, which builds up a lot of tension and awe. Since this is the ‘first contact’ scene, the hype and anxiousness building up are done perfectly. The way that the spaceship’s mechanics are introduced feels natural to the story. Before they enter, you can hear people in the background talk about gravity changing in the rooms, and when you finally get a look at the ship and the gravity is actually changing, it adds a little more mystery to what these aliens are.

Damilola: As they walk through, we get close-up shots and eye-level shots of the characters to see their reactions and the fear and mix of emotions going through them. This helps the audience relate to the characters and have empathy for their situation. The editing and camera movements of the scene are slow to build tension. We feel unsure of what can happen at any moment just like the characters. The sound design is very simple and the music never feels overbearing. It doesn’t feel forced in, it just adds to the uneasy feeling. The scene uses very low lighting as there are a lot of shadows and dark areas with few sources of light until they reach their destination within the ship. Everything feels claustrophobic due to this and they use medium shots that feel like they don’t show everything.

Shaharaim: The optical illusions done in this movie are fascinating as well. When they start to enter the actual main entrance of the ship, you can see a bright white light. At first, it looks like the end of the long corridor, but as they go up higher, and the gravity is reversed, they soon find out that it is in fact the window separating the aliens from the humans. The white window pairs extremely nicely with the ultra-matte black of the room, as it provides the perfect contrast between the known and unknown.

Damilola: Very simple, effective, but breathtaking cinematography. The use of establishing and long shots in this film always feel very purposeful as they show us the scale of the situation and how small humans look compared to bigger things. Now that they are deep inside the ship, it’s time for them to communicate with the aliens. This is one of the most important parts of the film because it not only gets the plot going, but it also adds to the theme of communication and language that this film conveys. This is the scene where Amy Adams’s character tries to communicate with the alien. We aren’t shown anything. We don’t see how the alien looks since it appears to be behind a barrier filled with smoke. This again adds a suspenseful tone. We don’t know what can happen at any moment. The music starts getting louder and more intense. We hear very strange, unfamiliar sounds coming from the alien. Cuts to the human faces again to show their reactions. Then we see the alien’s hands but it looks to either be its shadow or just covered in ink? Without knowing the context of the movie, we don’t have much information. But that wasn’t the point of this particular scene. The point was to set the stakes of the situation and make us, the audience feel uneasy. The director and every department that helped craft this scene delivered.