Arrival

“Arrival has a refreshing gender role-reversal.”

Title: Arrival (2016)
Director: Denis Villeneuve 👨🏼🇨🇦
Writers: Screenplay by Eric Heisserer 👨🏼🇺🇸 based on the book by Ted Chiang 👨🏻🇺🇸

Reviewed by Angie 👩🏻🇺🇸🌈

Technical: 4.5/5

Arrival is a methodical film that you discover, slowly and deliberately, through the eyes of the main character, Louise (Amy Adams). This is not a story about aliens invading the earth, but a mirror held up to the human individual—and it succeeds resoundingly.

Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

This film is helmed by a strong female lead. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though; how is she portrayed? Are there women in the supporting cast? Arrival does a great job navigating these issues.

Things they get right:

The character of Louise is strong: she outsmarts the flawed, short-sighted men running the First Contact program.
She displays multiple identities, as all humans do, portrayed in equal parts as a sharp linguist, a loving mother, a woman in grief, and so on.
We see a refreshing gender role-reversal, where Ian (Jeremy Renner), Louise’s science partner, is a less complex character used as a device to deepen her own storyline.

Mixed thoughts:

There are almost no women in the supporting cast. That said, Arrival ‘s military setting at least makes the imbalance slightly believable, rather than jarring.
Director Denis Villeneuve has an interesting tendency to employ women as witnesses to extreme circumstances. Emily Blunt’s character in Sicario (2015) unwittingly enters the horrors of the drug trade; in Arrival, Louise assumes a similar (and arguably stereotypical) role as a woman who serves as the film’s conscience as humans teeter on extinction due to masculine folly. That being said, I appreciated how Villeneuve’s “woman as witness” character has evolved from a helpless one in Sicario to one with agency in Arrival.

Finally, Arrival impresses with its strong share of female speaking time: 46% female vs 54% male (as captured using arementalkingtoomuch.com). Beyond Louise, her daughter supplements the airwaves while news coverage on TV sets make up a significant amount of speaking time, where the split is roughly 50/50 between male and female reporters.

Race: 4.5/5

As with any film about aliens, Arrival has rote appearances by international heads of state. While that should be a given, what’s more impressive is the presence of complex people of color in important roles: Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) has the most visibility, and his character is well-developed, serving as the straight man to Louise’s unconventional actions but backing her up when it matters most.

A second, well-scripted character of color is Chinese general Shang (Tzi Ma). Despite having limited screen time, he’s still written with multiple motivations and shows a desire to do the right thing for the world.

Overall though, Arrival remains a predominantly white film and the omission of any overt Latino characters feels like erasure, considering how they make up almost 1 in 5 residents in the United States.

Mediaversity Grade: A- 4.67/5

This movie is not for everyone, and viewers expecting explosions and action scenes will be disappointed. Instead, Arrival strives to explore emotional, philosophical themes, and does that exceedingly well. It also happens to have complex characters who are women, Black, and Chinese, making it clear that military movies need not be exclusionary to be bankable—perhaps the opposite, in fact.

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Grade: ALiJanuary 13, 2017Great for: Gender