Arrival Scene

entrance – a kind of tunnel - is located at the bottom of the ship that is hovering above them. The tunnel appears like an elevator well; they are at its bottom looking up to the top where a bright light is visible. Miraculously the characters are able to walk up the wall. First this is shown as if they were walking on the ground normally. However, when they are near the light source the scene is upside down (Figure 28). The light conditions and the tunnel’s texture create an unfamiliar atmosphere. Furthermore, the camera angle makes the whole situation even stranger and irritates the audience for a moment.

The scene in which the bomb explodes does not irritate the audience but probably Ian and Louise. They had no idea that Captain Marks and other soldiers planted a bomb inside the room with the transparent wall. However, the audience had received several hints about the soldiers’ distrust of the aliens, for instance, the phone call between Captain Marks and his wife or the moment when a soldier was watching a live stream of man complaining about the government. Lastly the audience sees how the soldiers plant

Many time leaps appear showing Louise and her daughter. The audience gets the impression that these sequences are flashbacks. In reality they do not show the past but the future. Villeneuve does not use titles like “10 years later” when we see these scenes for it would simply ruin the plot twist. Moreover, he cannot show titles like “15 years ago” because that would not be true. He makes the audience think the montage, that shows Hannah’s life from birth to death, is a flashback by showing it at the beginning of the film. It appears to be a kind of prologue. The audience only receives a subtle hint that implies the chronology of that “prologue”. This is when Louise questions the concepts of time and memory in the first few seconds of the