I agree with this. It seemed to me that the director was going for an effect that was integral to the narrative and very much intentional and not a trope though I can see how it might appear the latter for some.
I agree with this as well. The “feel” is integral to the way the story is told and to what it relates. I don’t think the movie would have worked otherwise, not at the level it did here.
I also thought the cinematography in Arrival was deliberate in trying to evoke the characters memory, confusion, pain, etc. I didn’t find it a trope at all in this case.
Ditto.
Agreed with Juan. But I just want to add that it requires knowledge of the ending to appreciate that in retrospect. As a linear viewer of the movie, the audience, for the majority of the runtime is not aware of the nature of the movie, and so I can’t fault the audience (including myself) thinking that the gloom is a trope. It’s only later that the audience finds out that it’s an integral part of the narrative structure.
Yes and no - The one place where it isn’t quite so gloomy is in some of her memories however, to me, while the gloom does illustrate some of that emotional atmosphere, it was too heavy handed, and detracted from some of the really cool ideas they were surfacing and exploring as good SF should, like the ways in which language can shape our brains and how we see the world, as well as the budding relationship . IMHO, the gloom adds to the emotional atmosphere, but detracts from a lot of the cool ideas they explore - kind of like adding a layer of dirt to them.
I trust it is on theme to come back to this years later.
It’s no mistake that Jonathan Nolan wrote both Memento and Interstellar. He knows how to write something with non-linear timelines that maintains narrative coherence as crystal clear as Roger Deakins cinematography. Meanwhile, the timelines in Arrival have all the narrative coherence of the cinematography in Quantum of Solace or the Bourne movies. I did mostly like this movie, especially the linguistic stretches, but the muddled timeline was disappointing. It’s not like you can’t handle the foreknowledge theme clearly. Devs did. (Yeah, that’s a diss coming from the future. Deal with it, Arrival.)
But the music was fantastic even after the movie lost its initial majesty. It has a lot in common with Jurassic Park on that front.
You can, but I think the non-intuitive presentation is a feature, not a bug. The reveal with her daughter doesn’t work if you know her images are coming from the future.
Your assessment of Nolan’s writing vs this is basically oposite to mine. I feel that Nolan keeps using cheap tricks making it impossible to understand what is going on the first viewing of the movie (the clones and teleportation bullshit in Prestige being the lowest point of his writing). It’s all spectacle and catchy gotchas without real substance. Except Dunkirk. That worked much better for me than any of his other films structure-wise.
Contrast twitch Arrival, where everything is character based and incredibly consistent, internally and externally. 40 minutes into the movie I “figured out” the trick (and this without even knowing there was a trick), which to me means it written coherently enough that the clues are there if you look and watch carefully.
Comparing this to Nolan is a disservice to Heisserer and Villeneuve. They are on different leagues.
Hmm. I’m guessing you don’t know it was based on a book? And that the whole misdirection of magic tricks was the whole point of the book? The endings differed a bit, but on the whole it was a solid adaptation.
I don’t care if it was based on a book or not. If the original material is bad, improve it when adapting it. In my opinion Arrival did that, with a much more evocative structure.
Prestige just didn’t work at as a coherent narrative at all (for me) and was, imho, one of the most unearned deus ex machinas I’ve seen in a high budget movie since then.
I just can’t see how anybody can point at this as an example of good writing at all. Even Shutter Island had a more earned twist (and don’t get me started on that one).
Where was this in The Prestige? Everything that happened in the story is supported by character action and motivations.
Okay, I’ve got to take issue with this. From literary the first shot the movie is showing what is going on, and even asks if we’re paying attention to what we’re looking at. The movie shows us the “twist” over and over and over again (and in many different forms–the bird trick, both versions of The Transported Man, etc) but like the characters, the viewer is resisting what’s right in front of them.
The introduction of an element (cloning) that wasn’t present in the first half of the film (there’s no mention that technology is possible in this world) and that came out of nowhere and that resolves parts of the plot?
Cloning (not cloning, creating copies in an instant, but whatever) is not shown at all. We are shown stuff that retroactively can be explained by the “twist”, but the possibility of the twist being there is not a major thematic element. It’s BS.
Contrast with Arrival (about first contact and aliens that experience time differently, present from pretty early on) or the Sixth Sense (where the idea ghosts are real is also present from the beginning). Or even with Tenet, where time travel is core to the movie also from the start.
Okay, so that’s not a “deus ex machina” but sure, if you got pushed out of the story due to Tesla’s cloning machine, I can see how it might put you off the rest of the tale.
Ok, so let’s see the accepted definition of Deus Ex Machina:
Cloning is such a plot device. It is unlikely in the context of what the movie has shown you (technical development in the world) and it comes as an unexpected shock.
I mean, if you want to disagree with film critics, be my guest.
The problem is that it wasn’t an unsolvable problem. In fact, there was a grossly simple solution for the original Transported Man trick, which is the crux of the movie. The obsession with finding a complicated answer was what drove him to ruin and Tesla.
Edit: As for Jim Emerson, sorry. He’s wrong too. I don’t care about his cred.
I kept hoping against hope, as the movie came to an end, that Nolan wouldn’t insist on one unimaginative supernatural reading – but there’s no denying the final shot. It’s a deus ex machina that Explains Everything by making a sudden, desperate leap into fantasy – as if the writers had written themselves into a box and found they could not explain their way out any other way than by suspending the laws of the physical world.
Again, I very strongly disagree. We see the field of hats. We then see the machine being used on that same hat repeatedly, without the original hat moving. We also see Tesla testing the machine on his cat. We then see (again) the field of hats, and this time the addition of multiple cats with the hats. Tesla even says explicitly that the machine works. And throughout, characters talk over and over about people not wanting to believe what they’re being shown–that’s the whole point behind watching a magic trick.
Yes we disagree. The movie is about magic tricks and the twist is about science fiction, when magic tricks are the opposite of that. It’s lazy writing. Probably there in the book too, I dunno.