By James Mottram & Matt Wilson
We all have interests outside of what we do for a living, and movie directors are no different. French-Canadian filmmaker, Denis Villeneuve, who has previously helmed the acclaimed thrillers, Prisoners and Sicario, has a very keen interest in science, which he’s been able to indulge with his latest flick, Arrival. “I have been attracted to science for a very long time,” Villeneuve states. “I was coming from a scientist background. I studied science at school for a while. I had to make a choice at one point, between science and cinema, and I took cinema. I love science. It was a part of me that I was not able to express for a long time.”
Villeneuve’s interest in science also extends to the fictional realm of comic books. “As a teenager, I was reading tons of sci-fi novels and graphic novels from Europe,” the director reveals. “I was in love with the exaggeration of reality, and the exploration of the world from a different point of view.”
So it is no surprise that Villeneuve has been wanting to make a science fiction film for a long time. Based on Ted Chiang’s short fiction, “Story Of Your Life”, Arrival sees Earth dealing with the arrival of an alien presence. The military have no way of communicating with the aliens, so scientific linguist, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), is recruited to learn the aliens’ language to ascertain what the aliens want before war breaks out. “I read the short story, which I loved,” Villeneuve says. “I told the producer that I wanted to do sci-fi, and they asked if I had read the short story. I said yes, but that I had no idea how to make a movie out of it. From there, I rewrote the script for a long time to make it my own.”
After reworking Eric Heisserer’s (Lights Out) script into something that he could engineer for the screen, Villeneuve was insistent on using practical effects and building sets, as opposed to leaning too heavily on CGI. “I feel that I created something strong on set,” the director says. “I refuse to use green screen. We built the spaceship for real. The inside of the spaceship was a huge chamber that was made with a ceiling and everything. It was a huge set. That for the actors was very important. It would be a different movie if we used CGI. I hate green screen…I would be bored to death. I need a relationship with reality, and the actors need to be in the real environment.”
In a shift away from most alien invasion flicks, Arrival’s extra-terrestrials have spread themselves across the globe, and the film doesn’t solely focus on how this off-world threat affects America. “My goal was to bring in other cultures,” Villeneuve says. “It’s minimalistic, but it’s there. At the beginning, I was trying to bring some South American and African influences into the film, just to see different faces and languages…the spaceship doesn’t just land above The White House or Buckingham Palace. That was a very important part of the movie.”
As such, Villeneuve spared no expense in making sure that the right people were involved with making the movie, hiring people from all corners of the world. “We were receiving music from Berlin, from New Zealand, from everywhere. I tried to find the right people to make the movie,” he asserts, placing particular emphasis on the film’s score, which came courtesy of Icelandic composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, with whom Villeneuve had previously worked on Prisoners and Sicario. “He started to work on the music before the shoot,” the director explains. “I shot the movie listening to the music. He read the screenplay, and he sent me tracks…he sent me different approaches for the main theme. At one point, we were looking for a specific emotion for this piece. It needed a very delicate emotion at the beginning. That music helped in the perfect way; it’s melancholic and delicate. I just wanted to embrace what the images had. It’s a delicate process.”
And while Villeneuve admits that making science fiction movies is exhausting and expensive, as it is “a nightmare to create worlds”, the director is not about to stop with Arrival. For this lover of science and science fiction, his next project is nothing short of a (very risky) dream come true, with Villeneuve handed the reins on Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1082 classic, Blade Runner, which he promises will also be filled with real effects. “Yes Yes Yes”, he ends, which is all he can say about the highly anticipated film.
Arrival is released in cinemas on November 10. Stay tuned for much more on the film.
