Nocturnal Animals

The movie opens with a quartet of fat to very fat women dancing naked.  When the opening credits finish, it turns out that this is a art exhibit and some very realistic sculptures of the dancing naked women are sprawled on platforms while the dancing versions play on large screens on the wall.  The architect of this 'art' show is Susan (Amy Adams).  Susan is in a loveless marriage with Hutton (Armie Hammer), her second husband.  The morning after her show, a manuscript from her first husband arrives.  Susan starts reading and is immediately engrossed by the tale of Tony.

 

Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) is driving with his wife (Isla Fisher) and daughter to Marfa, Texas in the middle of the night when he is forced off the road by a trio of hooligans led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  The confrontation leads to Tony in one car while his wife and daughter are driven off in the other.  Shortly thereafter he is abandoned in the desert.  Hiking back to the highway, he is interviewed by Officer Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), who becomes his ally in tracking down his family.

 

The book has parallels to Susan and Edward's marriage and breakup.  Their relationship is loosely explored via flashbacks.  Interestingly, Edward is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, demonstrating that she identified Tony as Edward.  Susan is deeply affected by the book, often setting it down in the midst of some particularly unpleasant passages.  The linking of the book with her first marriage provides a mystery quality to the film.  Incidents in the book may or may not reflect incidents in their marriage.  The ambiguous ending allows the viewer to decide what it all means.

 

Not for everyone but I enjoyed it.  Well, except for that opening bit.

Arrival

Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a brilliant linguist.  She is at the university when the news reports the arrival of 12 alien craft that have landed around the world.  Soon thereafter, Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) requests that she translate something that sounds like angry whale song.  The next day, she is on her way to one of the alien craft in Montana.  While she will be the lead linguist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) will be the lead scientist.  The two are quickly prepped and then sent to the alien craft where they attempt to communicate with the aliens.  The rest of the film covers the efforts to do so amid the growing chaos across the globe and a pending clash with other alien ships.

 

The movie opens with Louise's daughter, Hannah.  We see her as a baby, a toddler, a tween, and finally as an early teen.  It is sad.  Throughout her interaction with the aliens, Louise has frequent flashes of her daughter, which hint at solutions to her current problem in decoding the alien language.  It seemed very much off topic though it eventually proves to be important overall.

The movie is very engaging but it touches on subjects that it entirely fails to explore.  It is mentioned that language influences how one thinks.  This is certainly true.  In English, you can actively 'like' ice cream (i.e. I like ice cream), but in Spanish, you passively 'like' it (i.e. Me gusta helado - Ice cream is liked by me).  When the Romans studied philosophy and science, they borrowed Greek words.  In fact, the most learned Romans would simply converse in Greek.  I once met an Austrian woman who was fascinated by "the bartender was a woman."  In German, the word bartender expresses the gender internally.  That English didn't supply the gender amazed and delighted her.  At this point, I have discussed the specific topic more than the movie.  However, the movie does detail many other language issues in a first contact situation, especially if you don't have Star Trek's universal translator handy.

That the super-advanced aliens left all the work of translating their language to the comparative primitives was irritating.  Imagine a modern man traveling back to the Stone Age and then just sitting around and waiting for the cavemen to figure out English.  These aliens can traverse the stars but are no help at all when it comes to communication.  They are completely passive.  One can argue that the whole point of the movie was that humans learn the alien language and refusing to communicate in anything but their language would expedite that goal.  Such is not stated but I can think of no other reason that the aliens would be so passive during the entire process.

Though I enjoyed it for most of its runtime, the ending was unsatisfying.  Of all things, I was reminded of Slaughterhouse-Five when the movie concluded.