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In ChiangвЂ™s story, this discovery is prompted by a breakthrough in alien physics: the heptapods donвЂ™t understand algebra, but they understand the variational calculus behind FermatвЂ™s principle, which dictates that a ray of light always travels the shortest possible distance between two points. They donвЂ™t speak in terms of causality or linear time. As with their bodies, thereвЂ™s no forward or backward direction. The written heptapod language, Banks realizes, has an entirely alien grammar. A heptapod splits its own leg into a spindly, squishy starfish it blasts a cloud of ink that smokes and curls like cream in iced coffee, and then resolves into an ornamented circle-their version of a sentence. In the movie, this event is rendered to make the theatre gasp. вЂњA doodle of script, vaguely cursive, popped onto the screen,вЂќ Chiang writes. She takes off her hazmat suit and elicits the alien language in writing. David Lean would have approved.вЂќД«anks is a wonderful character for Adams, who naturally projects sweetness and resilience sheвЂ™s bolder than her physicist partner, as well as the military blowhards directing the operations at all twelve sites. вЂњBehold the great mass of the thing, standing prouder than a neolithic stone,вЂќ Lane writes in his review, вЂњwith green prairies beneath and billows of bright fog streaming off the hills and breaking around it like waves. In вЂњStory of Your Life,вЂќ Banks arrives on site by driving an вЂњoff-road vehicle into the encampment, a small village of tents pitched by the Army in a farmerвЂ™s sun-scorched pasture.вЂќ In вЂњArrival,вЂќ this moment is not quotidian: itвЂ™s breathtaking, sublime. The filmmakers steer clear of this lecture-hall material, and Young turns ChiangвЂ™s functional transitions into rich and staggering visual revelations. Chiang writes with a gruff and ready heart that brings to mind George Saunders and Steven Millhauser, but heвЂ™s uncompromisingly cerebral: вЂњStory of Your LifeвЂќ contains explanations of variational calculus, charts that illustrate the mathematician Pierre de FermatвЂ™s principle of least time, and sentences like вЂњThe sound spectrograph for вЂheptapod eats gelatin eggвЂ™ was analyzable.вЂќ The cinematographer Bradford Young, who also worked on вЂњA Most Violent YearвЂќ and вЂњAinвЂ™t Them Bodies Saints,вЂќ does uncommon work to expand an esoteric story about death and linguistics into a tale that feels as wild and wide as the sky. Villeneuve made вЂњArrivalвЂќ with the screenwriter Eric Heisserer, who spent six years adapting ChiangвЂ™s вЂњStory of Your LifeвЂќ on spec. ItвЂ™s the government, taking her to Montana to translate firsthand. Then, while sheвЂ™s sleeping, shards of light break across her bedroom, waking her. IвЂ™m about the same.вЂќ The next day, a military official shows up in her office with a recording of alien language. вЂњMe?вЂќ Banks says, cradling a phone to her ear, kicking off her shoes in the house where she lives alone. Students walk out of class the stock market plunges fights break out in public everyone calls his mom. Viewers, on the other hand, might find their pulses rising, as I did post-election, the panic resonates. вЂњIвЂ™m not sure I believe in beginnings and endings,вЂќ Adams murmurs, handing the audience an epigraph and a clue.ДЄdams plays a self-effacing professor named Louise Banks, who remains calm as the spaceships descend.

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The opening of вЂњArrivalвЂќ sets this mood, with Max RichterвЂ™s elegiac strings piece вЂњ On the Nature of DaylightвЂќ connecting a series of apparent flashbacks, in which Amy Adams watches her daughter grow from infancy to girlhood to young adulthood, then die. But the objects seem lonely, not menacing they are visual articulations of the tone of the movie, powerfully incomprehensible and sad. The news coverage is immediately hysterical, of course. There are twelve of these spaceships in total: tall, partial ovoids, silent and weightless, suspended feet above the Siberian tundra, the Indian Ocean, the Sudanese desert. ItвЂ™s also an exploration of a humble and brave ontological position that, in the aftershock of the Presidential election, feels as sublime, unfamiliar, and vaguely oracular as the iron-gray spaceships that hover in the film.

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The movie is a model of faithful, transformative film adaptation. It stars Amy Adams as a linguist who comes to play an extraordinary role during an alien visitation. вЂњArrival,вЂќ the new movie from Denis Villeneuve (вЂњSicario,вЂќ вЂњPrisonersвЂќ), which Anthony Lane reviewed in last weekвЂ™s issue of the magazine-and which, this past weekend, earned twenty-four million dollars at the box office, more than people were expecting-is based on вЂњStory of Your Life,вЂќ by the literary sci-fi writer Ted Chiang.

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