Arrival is the rare science fiction film that uses its genre conventions not as decoration but as argument. Denis Villeneuve’s film is about first contact, yes, but it is actually about grief, about language, about whether knowing something terrible in advance would change whether you chose it.

Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, a linguist brought in to communicate with alien visitors who have arrived in massive shell-shaped craft at twelve locations worldwide. The military wants to know their intentions. Louise wants to understand how they think. The distance between those goals is where the film lives.

The heptapods’ language, circular, non-linear, built on a completely different relationship with time, is gorgeous and strange. The process of learning it is the film’s central narrative, and Villeneuve makes linguistics feel as tense as a thriller. Cinematographer Bradford Young shoots the alien environments with a hushed awe that never tips into spectacle.

Adams gives one of her finest performances, intellectually rigorous and emotionally open simultaneously. Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker provide good support in roles that frame her work.

The film’s twist, which recontextualizes everything that precedes it, is one of the cleverest structural choices in recent science fiction. It is earned not just dramatically but philosophically: the realization that Louise has been seeing her future, and chooses it anyway, is both heartbreaking and deeply human.

Arrival is the science fiction film that most rewards rewatching. Its final image is perfect.