Arrival Essay J.G .

Jose Guevara 

Professor Charlie Warnberg  

ENGL 1301  

2/27/2019 

Cinematography and Mise-en-scene in “Arrival” 

In “Arrival” The director Dennis Villanueva really makes you realize, you can really see a whole story even if it’s just little details. Dennis Villanueva does an amazing job connecting the story, and helping you see the bigger picture in little details by using cinematography and mise-en-scene.   

Dennis Villanueva showed the whole love story about Louise Banks and Ian Donnelly at the begging and end of the movie by using mise-en-scene. There was a shot and it was focusing just on the living room a plain living room with just a table and a couch and really little things. That room was the room of Louise Banks one of the main characters in the movie. The movie goes on she figured how to communicate with the aliens, and she meets a guy named Ian Donnelly that happens to be a guy she fell in love with. When the end comes that same shot happens again the exact same way, but this time there is some changes there is telescope, two wine cups, there is more stuff in the living room. And that’s mise-en-scene, because it tells you a story just by the props that Louise Banks and Ian Donnelly are married and living together.  

Dennis Villanueva like to use a lot of cinematography to explain a lot what’s going on in the movie. There is one scene where the cinematography is amazing where the alien arrived, and the citizens found out and freaked out and stared panicking and chaos just happened. The cameras moving fast looking down at the citizens running like crazy, and camera angles where people are crashing, and just complete chaos that the camera catches at every angle. At the end of that scene Louise Banks goes back to the school and camera shows how it’s all empty, and that’s where Mise-en-scene comes we know its empty because the citizens were all scared of the aliens arriving.  

In all Dennis Villanueva did made the viewer realize the little details caught by cinematography and mise-en-scene can also make you see the bigger picture by showing the love story of Louis and Ian and when the aliens arrived.  

Work Cited 

Arrival. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Performance by Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker. Sound Editing by Sylvain Bellemare. Lava Bear Films, 2016. DVD. 

2 thoughts on “Arrival Essay J.G .”

  2. In your thesis, you wrote about the director using cinematography and mise-en-scene to portray his message. Although, in both body paragraphs you used cinematography and have supporting details. You need to support mise-en-scene in a body paragraph. Also missing works cited. -Jonathan Ramirez

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