“Arrival” was released nationwide almost a month ago, and much to everyone’s surprise, it has managed to hold its own facing some pretty tough competition over the last few weeks. The film has grossed over $75 million domestically and $115 million worldwide against a $45 million budget — that’s pretty damn good for a sci-fi film that doesn’t contain big effects à la “The Martian” or “Gravity.” In fact, last weekend it bumped up from number five to number three in the box office, which suggests strong legs and word-of-mouth, and as the awards season gets hotter, buzz surrounding “Arrival” should only get stronger as we head into the new year.
For those of you who haven’t seen “Arrival” yet, the film stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker and tells the story of a linguistics professor (played by Adams) who leads a team of investigators after giant, mysterious spaceships touch down in 12 random locations around the world. The professor must find a way to communicate with these extraterrestrial visitors as the threat of global war looms throughout. It’s a fascinating, thoughtful, emotional rollercoaster of a film. Our own Jessica Kiang, who saw “Arrival” at the Venice Film Festival back in September, described the film as such: “It’s a monolith, a megalith, but like the gigantic alien craft that comes to rest somewhere above Montana at the start of the film, despite its immensity it hovers elegantly overhead. The film defies gravity.”
Folks who saw “Arrival” at The Landmark in Los Angeles this past weekend not only got to see this “gravity-defying” film, they were also given a special treat — a post-screening Q&A with Adams, director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer. Together, they talked about how they each dove into the emotional and intellectual complexities of the story, originally represented in Ted Chiang’s “Story Of Your Life” — the short story which “Arrival” is based on. Villeneuve and Heisserer also go into detail about the alien designs and the language that was created for the heptapods.
You can read excerpts of the conversation below, or you can listen to the full audio recording of the Q&A. There was a lot of funny back-and-forth between Adams, Villeneuve, and Heisserer which was difficult to capture via text, so do give it a listen. Fair warning, however: Due to the twisty nature of the film, there are spoilers abound. So, if you haven’t seen “Arrival” yet, bookmark this article, watch the film, then come back. It’ll be here waiting for you.
What was it about the original story that made you want to direct this film?
Denis Villeneuve: I was looking for that kind of story for a very long time, something that would have that kind of poetry, that profoundness. Usually, in other movies where there’s aliens on screen, they talk in English, and the process of translation takes about five seconds and our movie is about those five seconds.
Eric, how did you feel like you cracked the story, like “I got this”?
I’m still working on [cracking] it [laughs]. Oddly enough, the first few and the last few pages from the first draft remained intact all the way through with very subtle deviations. I think that the heart of it always remained the same; that’s what made me feel comfortable working with all the crazier things like the Fermat’s principle and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis… I could go into that because I knew the heart of it was good.
Amy, obviously the film feels universal, it’s grand, but at the heart it’s a story about a mother dealing with loss. When you first read the screenplay, what made you say, “I gotta play her”?
Amy Adams: Being a mother myself, I connected with the first few pages. They really got me emotionally. And then getting into it, it was one of two screenplays I read in my career that I was like, “Oh my god.” I got to the end of it and I immediately had to go back because not only did it strike me in a place that spoke to my soul, but also it spoke to my intellect. I loved how there was a character — female or male — that was written in a way that had an emotional intelligence as well as a highly tuned intellect.
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As you were developing the story further, how did it evolve? What were some of the notes that you got early on to take it in the direction we just saw?
EH: Before Denis came on, I wrote it on spec and it was just me and the two producers at Shawn Levy’s company 21 Laps [and] we were working on it on the side. It was like this little lab experiment. We were already told that the studios wouldn’t want to make a non-franchise sci-fi picture about linguistic relativity and we were like, “Well, I do!” [laughs] So, we were swinging for it and I recall my first draft, I sat down and the producers were like, “Ok, Eric, there are two pages here that just have Louise teaching the heptapods very basic vocabulary and I gotta say, this is not sexy at all. Why do we have this scene?” And then I went to the white board and I wrote the question, “What is your purpose on Earth?” and said, “Here’s why you need these” and I went through it and they said, “That’s the scene, Eric. That’s the one that should go in the script.” And I was like “Oh. Ok.” But Amy does a much better job than I did. [laughs]
AA: Well it took me a couple takes. I learned that I couldn’t write and act at the same time [laughs]. I found my limits as an actress and for one take, Denis was like, “Cut, cut, cut.” And I was like, “What? I thought it was going so good?” And he says, “Look at the board.” And [the board] said, “What is your porpoise on Ert?” I misspelled it and Denis wisely called cut, but that’s now my favorite question to ask people: “What is your porpoise on Ert?”
Did you ever feel like you had to put a face to the heptapods so people could look in their eyes? Because the design is so unique, the heptapods don’t look like other aliens we’ve seen from the last 80 years of film.
DV: It was a big challenge to design them, to create a new species, a new form of life that obeyed to different laws, like gravity or physics. It took me months to work with this concept artist, Carlos Huante. But there was this idea coming out of the short story that they had seven legs, so that was something I wanted to be faithful to — and it was the same in the script as well. I wanted them to have a kind of presence, like when you are in contact with a very huge animal, you feel a different kind of intelligence and sensibility. But it was a long process to design these entities.