It was a bit late for Indonesians to see this movie as it had already played in the US for quite some time. I was not sure for such delay as normally movies would start to premier in Indonesia same day or sometimes even earlier than in US. But anyway, it was a good thing that it still premiered in January 2017 (rather than say mid of the year), since we had the chance to see it before the Golden Globe award was announced. Yes, this movie was nominated in Golden Globe. So should be good, right? Anyway, let's get on with the movie.
Brief Story Line
Louise Banks (Amy Adams - Enchanted, Man of Steel etc) was a very good linguist who taught at a university. One day while she was giving a lecture to her class, news were spreading around about some Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) which landed in the Montana, US. Apparently there were altogether 12 similar UFO in other countries like China, Russia, Pakistan, Sudan and so on. Class was then dismissed for security reasons.
On the following day, Louise was approached by a US Colonel named GT Weber (Forest Whitaker - The Last King of Scotland, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story etc) who had cooperated with her earlier in some secret translation work mission, to help translate what the aliens were trying to communicate. Later that night, Louise was picked up by Weber in a helicopter where she met for the first time, the very intelligent theoretical Physicist Ian Donnely (Jeremy Renner - American Hustle, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation etc).
Both of them were dropped of to the camp nearby where one of the UFO landed in Montana. They were introduced to the CIA agent David Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg - Steve Jobs etc) who led the camp and also Captain Mark (Mark O'Brien). The camp was filled with many intelligent people from various fields and there was also a communication room where all other 11 countries were sharing information on what they learned. After some health precautions, Louise and Ian went to the spaceship for the first time where the gravity was working differently there. They finally see the Aliens who occupied the spaceship. Unfortunately the communication was very difficult as none of them understand what they were trying to say.
Upon their return to the camp, Louise and Ian were so overwhelmed and were having trouble in adapting such reality that they needed some time to recuperate. Louise who was very brilliant in linguistic thought of a way to communicate using some props. By taking some risks, she finally made a break through and was starting to understand at least the first word which would be a good beginning.
Colonel Weber who was under a lot of pressure, kept on pushing Louise to get the answer faster. With the help from Ian, both of them were collecting information and start to understand more and more words of the aliens whom they called Abbot and Costello (very famous and popular comedians in US history in the 1940s through 1950s). Meanwhile, the Chinese was really worried of the aliens intention and under the lead of their general Shang (Tzi Ma - Rush Hour, Dante's Peak etc), they were very vocal in voicing their concern and requested the United Nations to have a cooperation to fight the aliens. Whatever the Chinese doing, would also be followed by 3 other countries.
Things also got complicated with so many outside people who insisted that the government and army should do something about the aliens before they started to annihilate humans. This also affected some of the army including the ones in Montana. In addition, the more interaction Louise had with the aliens, the more she kept on getting the flashbacks about her daughter which seemed to make her confused and felt sick.
So could Louise find out the aliens intention before it was too late? Would they be able to stop the global fight between aliens and humans? What was the reasons for Louise' dreams and flashbacks? Find all the answers in this different kind of Aliens movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Wow, this movie was a lot heavier than I thought. It was an alien movie, but a lot different than any other alien movie. It was not the kind of alien invasion movie like War of the Worlds. It was an intelligent alien drama movie with the particular performance of Amy Adams as the brave and smart linguist who tried her best to find out the intention of the aliens, to avoid the war and her struggle to maintain her state of mind. The main attraction of the movie was not in the special effects since you would not see a lot of them in here.
In watching this movie, you would have to keep your mind open and maintain your concentration from beginning till the end, otherwise you would miss the most important part of the surprise in the last 20 minutes. It would totally blow your mind away. It was maybe like an epiphany on my side once I realized this fact. It was incredibly well kept by the director and writer of this movie from the start.
In addition, the logic that Louise provided when she tried to buy some time from Colonel Weber was a very smart thing to use. Plus also the reasons provided by her why it would take some time to avoid misunderstanding on what the aliens' intentions were. Bottom line this is a very intelligent movie written smartly. I could understand the appeal of Golden Globe committee on the nomination of Amy Adams as best actress and also best director for Denis Villeneuve.
In conclusion, do not expect an alien war movie as this is not one of them. You should expect a drama movie with slow pace and very few main characters in it. My wife and I enjoyed this movie despite it was not our usual kind of full action suspenseful movie. We enjoyed the story and my wife particularly loved the story involving Louise.
So if you are a fan of science fiction drama, then this one definitely for you. But if you are hoping to see science fiction alien movie, then this one would not be suitable for you.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Note:
This movie was based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang, which had won few writing awards such as Nebula Award for best novella in the year 2000.
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