A therapist breaks down the miscommunication in Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 Oscar-nominated sci-fi epic Arrival. Starring Jeremy Renner as experimental physicist Ian Donnelly and Amy Adams’ linguist Dr. Louise Banks, a group of scientists is tasked to learn to communicate with extraterrestrials when gigantic spaceships arrive on Earth.

As a movie that revolves almost entirely around communication, Arrival explores the impact of language on perception and how to foster an understanding between different cultures and realities. The movie grossed over $206 million worldwide against a production budget of $47 million and received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Villeneuve.

Recently, licensed therapist Jonathan Decker and filmmaker Alan Seawright of Cinema Therapy sat down to discuss the 2016 movie and its approach to miscommunication and the movie’s theme about knowledge and what it means to be human. In the scene where Louise, Ian, and Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) came together to talk about the situation early in the movie, Decker pointed out how they entered the conversation under “false ᴀssumptions” when they brought their perspectives to the table.

He praised the “level of characterization” in the movie from a psychological standpoint, especially with Weber’s character, and explained that while some of the lines Colonel Weber said sounded condescending on the surface, the performance and how the scenes were written show that he’s trying his best to understand something he doesn’t understand. Check out his comments below:

What This Means For Arrival

Arrival Is A Film About Miscommunication Set In A Futuristic World

From almost triggering an unnecessary war, Arrival‘s mind-bending plot evolves to reveal the two great losses Louise will experience in the future. After the aliens gave her the tool (which was what they meant by “weapon“) to perceive life in a non-linear way, she chose to embrace what had happened instead of trying to change it.

Decker sheds some light on how the movie tells a story about communication and miscommunication against the backdrop of science fiction, an approach that brilliantly deepens the movie’s discussion about free will and determinism. Here’s what he said:

The fact is every perspective has validity to it, which is what makes the movie so great, is even the people who on the surface, you’re like, oh, don’t be such an idiot or bonehead, if you stop to think about who they are and why they are that’s how that person would respond in that.

Arrival has a near-perfect score among critics and an 82% audience approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes. The therapist’s comments delve deep into the nuances of characters and scenes that audiences might have missed the first time and provide an insightful look at why Villeneuve’s sci-fi movie is so captivating.

Our Take On Miscommunication In Arrival

It Explains Why The Movie Ended The Way It Did

Adams adds just the right amount of sadness in Arrival. The alien may have brought a tool to help humanity perceive time differently, but it doesn’t offer solutions, which is what science is for. Louise got to understand why she had lost her husband, but she couldn’t change the way he was or how she was going to approach the situation.

Even with her knowledge of her daughter’s rare disease, no scientific advancement was made during that time. It’s very hard to convince audiences who are so used to happy endings of an imperfect ending, but Decker’s comment perfectly breaks down how Villeneuve achieved it.

Source: Cinema Therapy