[Commlist] New book: Arrival - A study of Denis Villeneuve’s genre-transcendent film

Roche, David. /Arrival/. University of Texas Press, 2024.
ISBN 9781477330159
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477330159/


A study of Denis Villeneuve’s genre-transcendent film.

In Denis Villeneuve’s /Arrival/ (2016), scientists must decipher the 
language of and peacefully communicate with aliens who have landed on 
Earth before the world’s military attacks. In this first book-length 
study of the film, scholar David Roche argues that it is one of the most 
important films of this century, and the most brilliant science fiction 
film since /Blade Runner/. Roche posits /Arrival/ as a blockbuster with 
artistic ambitions—an argument supported by the film’s several Academy 
Award nominations—and looks closely at how the film engages with 
theoretical questions posed by contemporary film studies and philosophy 
alike. Each section explores a central aspect of the film: its status as 
an auteur adaptation; its relation to the science fiction genre; its 
themes of communication on narrative and meta-narrative levels; its 
aesthetics of time and space; and the political and ethical questions it 
raises. Ultimately, Roche declares /Arrival/ a unique, multifaceted 
experience in the world of hard science fiction films, placing it in 
context with works like /2001: A Space Odyssey/, /Close Encounters of 
the Third Kind/, and /Contact/ while also examining how it bridges the 
gap between genre and art house cinema.


David Roche’s superb book approaches /Arrival/ from a remarkable number 
of analytical angles, deftly teasing out the film’s layers of meaning 
using linguistics, cultural theory, moral philosophy, cognitive 
psychology, and close formal analysis. This is a significant 
contribution to science fiction film studies that will illuminate your 
rewatches of a great film. ~Bradley Schauer, author of Escape Velocity: 
American Science Fiction Film, 1950–1982


  * Introduction
  * 1. /Arrival/ as Auteur Film Adaptation
  * 2. /Arrival/ as Hard Soft Science Fiction
  * 3. /Arrival/ as a Reflection on/of Communication
  * 4. /Arrival/ as an Experience of Time
  * 5. /Arrival/ as an Experience of Space
  * 6. /Arrival/ as a Political and Ethical Experience
  * Conclusion
  * Acknowledgments
  * Notes
  * Filmography
  * Bibliography
  * Index

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