Arrival

Finally got around to seeing this on my own, since Kestrell wasn’t very interested. And, as it happens, I think she was right: the film was not very blind-friendly. In addition to having many scenes which would have been challenging to verbally describe, the sound mix was often needlessly confusing. Dramatic music led into – or played over? – alien speech, muddying which was which. There were a few junctures where, even after rewinding and re-listening, I couldn’t quite make out what seemed to be important dialogue. It’s possible that all this was deliberate on the director’s part, to make some sort of point about the difficulties of communication; if so, I can only say that I strongly disagree with that choice. Reading a little about the film afterwards, I was frankly shocked that it won an Oscar for sound editing.

That said, I did think it was quite a good movie on its own merits. As an adaptation of one of my favorite stories – it did better than I thought Hollywood could have (an admittedly low bar). They added explosions, guns, and large-scale political angst. They significantly reduced the amount of science and philosophy. On the other hand, the remaining quantities of science and philosophy were still super-high by Hollywood standards. Perhaps most importantly, they retained the emotional heart of the story.

Amy Adams was excellent in the lead role. I was a bit distracted for the first half of the film, trying to figure out where I’d seen her before. Then, from a certain angle, it clicked into focus: I wasn’t actually recognizing her, she just looked a lot like my friend Libby Beyreis!