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Films

Arrival

Christopher Carroll asks if communicating with aliens really would be possible.

In Arrival (2016), a number of large oval craft arrive on Earth from outer space. Rather than follow the hysteria of a planet coming to terms with its first encounter with aliens, as is a frequent trope of films with this sort of premise, the movie follows a linguist who works as part of a team tasked with figuring out how to communicate with these visitors from another world. She’s picked up in the middle of the night and taken by helicopter to a military campsite near where one of the spacecraft hovers. Military personnel, intelligence personnel, and scientists are already working there, and monitoring the progress of those working at similar sites around the world. After a number of breakthroughs in communicating with the aliens, the sharing of information between the global sites breaks down as the movie shifts to the question of what the aliens really are here to do: Are their intentions hostile and linked to a desire to divide and conquer, or are they here for some other reason? The plot thickens into an interesting conclusion I will not spoil for those who have not seen the film yet.

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