Sci-fi thriller – Arrival – Thame Cinema 4 All

ARRIVAL  – USA, 2016, 116 minutes, 12A certificate – Directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O’Brien

STRANGE, daring, complex and compelling, Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic is a cinematic treat about very close encounters. The world wakes one day to the presence of vast, dark, eliptical craft suspended just above the earth’s surface at multiple locations around the globe. Panic ensues. It is not clear what ‘they’ want, or whether they come in peace.

Global military and intelligence services step in. Amy Adams is Louise Banks, a work obsessed linguistics professor of international repute who is also dealing with a terrible loss. She is reluctantly drafted by gruff military officials who descend in their choppers in the middle of the night, and take her to help translate the strange sounds and symbols that constitute the vistors’ language. Her task demands that she brave close contact with these beings and their unknowable powers; initially she is terrified, but gradually she becomes emboldened, even exhilarated, although the task means painful confrontation of thoughts she is attempting to suppress.

Her negotiations and calculations take time, and international military generals with fingers on buttons are getting paranoid, convinced of malign intent, suspicious of their allies. As the crisis escalates, Louise must counsel in favour of trust and international collaboration. But it is not all about the close encounter; the film is also a meditation on language, time and loss, one that manages to be intellectually challenGing as well as romantic, thrilling as well as haunting. And Adams is a knockout – steely, quietly commanding and heroic. View the trailer here.

Arrival – Thame Cinema 4 All, Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street – Friday April 7 – Doors open 7.30pm – Licenced bar