A Matter of Life and Death: Cinematic Necropolitics in ‘Arrival’

“The first is the real death of the biological body, after which there is usually another, the second, exemplified by the various rituals of mourning that take place in the symbolic.” (Copjec: 1994, 46)

In Denis Villeneuve's 2016 film Arrival, the first death is the death of the child, and the second a multifaceted and intertwining array of harmonious symbolic entities. In the few years since its release, Arrival has inspired numerous critical responses that have analysed its methods of representation at the intersections of narrative, temporal structure, and linguist theme. This article engages with a variety of theoretical positions and specifically privileges psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalysis grounds my analysis of death in Arrival because it is a theoretical discourse that has often been concerned with the subject of language and the subject in time specifically, providing great insight into how these two facets support one another in the understanding of the social subject.

When twelve extra-terrestrial pods appear around the world, Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is asked to head a team of linguists who are set the task of finding an answer to the question: What is their purpose on earth? Or as the poster indicates: Why are they here?

Arrival is immediately enticing in its polished aesthetic. Conventional mise-en-scène and rhythmic structure set an appealing tonality. If “excess implies a gap or lag in motivation” (Thompson: 1977, 57) then Arrival is a film with minimal excess. Its adherence to classical conventions include unswerving realistic portrayals and clear motivation in character, narrative and compositional elements such as consistent colour pallet, smooth, steady camera work that pans space and tracks Louise and efficient focus racking technique, all of which is stylistically established in the first ten minutes of the film. Even when the structure changes from a classically linear perpetuation, it never strays from a