FILM 1644: ARRIVAL
TRIVIA: Director Denis Villeneuve and
screenwriter Eric Heisserer created a fully functioning, visual, alien
language. Heisserer, Villeneuve and their teams managed to create a
"logogram bible," which included over a hundred different completely
operative logo-grams, seventy-one of which are actually featured in the movie.
The inky circular alien language
was created by Montreal artist Martine Bertrand. It is also the artist's son who created
Hannah's drawings.
Louise tells Colonel Weber that the
word 'kangaroo' comes from an historical misunderstanding, and actually means
"I don't know", only to tell Ian that the story is untrue but
illustrates her point. This is an actual myth, not just a made up story. It
involves Lieutenant James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks who arrived in Australia in
the 18th century, where they made contact with the Guugo Yimithirr, a coastal
Aboriginal tribe. They were puzzled by the sight of a kangaroo, and asked a
tribesman what it was. According to the myth, the tribesman responded with the
word "gangurru", meaning "I don't understand" in his
language. Banks mistook it for the local term for the animal, spelling it as
"kanguru" in his diary. The myth was debunked in the 1970s by
linguist John B. Haviland. In reality, the word gangurru specifically refers to
the grey kangaroo in the Guugo Yimithirr language. When Cook and Banks traveled
1,400 miles inland, they encountered the Baagandji tribe, who were unfamiliar
with the other tribe and the word gangurru, and thought it meant "unknown
animal". The Baagandji then started to use the word to describe Cook's and
Banks' horses.
While the shape of the ship was
decided early on, Denis Villeneuve had great difficulty imagining an interior
that would allow humans to easily navigate through such a steep and vertical
design. The later decision to turn gravity sideways offered an obvious and
convenient solution.
Ted Chiang, who
wrote the story the film is based upon, approved the film, saying, "I
think it's that rarest of the rare in that it's both a good movie and a good
adaptation... And when you consider the track record of adaptations of written
science fiction, that's almost literally a miracle."
"Dirty Sci-fi" is what
director Denis Villeneuve
and cinematographer Bradford Young called the look they created together for
Arrival. Villeneuve wanted it to feel like "This was happening on a bad
Tuesday morning, like when you were a kid on the school bus on a rainy day and
you'd dream while looking out the window at the clouds."
Scandinavian photographer Martina
Hoogland Ivanow was a major influence on cinematographer Bradford Young's
look of this film, especially with her exhibition and book
"Speedway."
In writing the story, Ted Chiang
had in mind the following quote of the great physicist Albert Einstein:
"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly
persistent illusion."
The siren emitted throughout the
movie signaling the scientists' preparation to approach the ship is identical
to the siren used in The Purge (2013) and its sequels.
Abbott and Costello resemble Kang
and Kodos, the aliens from The Simpsons (1989) Treehouse of Horror segments.
