Subject: Retrospective: Contact (1997)

From: Paul McElligott <[email-masked]>
Date: 3 Jul 1999 16:28:13 GMT

CONTACT

a review by
Paul McElligott

Rating: 7 out of 10 prime numbers

Contact is a nobly intentioned but ultimately unsatisfying adaptation of
Carl Sagan's only novel.  It details the circumstances surrounding the
first clear sign of intelligent life in outer space and their effects on
the life of a young and idealistic radio astronomer named Ellie Arroway
(Jodie Foster).

We first meet Ellie at a giant radio telescope in Puerto Rico, where she
is part of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project.
Her research is quickly killed, however, by her highly political David
Drumlin (Tom Skerrit), who disdains "pure research" in favor of science
with "commercial applications.

She goes in search of private funding and is turned down at every step
until she pitches her project to a corporation run by the mysterious
S.R. Hadden (John Hurt).  Then, with that money just about to finally
dry up, Ellie is sitting out in the desert near the Very Large Array in
New Mexico when she hears over her headphones a very powerful pulsing
radio signal.  In the movie's most exciting and believable sequence,
Ellie and her coworkers determine that the signal has to be coming from
the star Vega.

At first the signal appears to be just sequences of prime numbers, then
it turns out to be a TV signal of the Berlin Olympics bounced back to
Earth from 50 years before.  Further decoding, with Hadden's help,
reveals another layer to message, containing detailed plans for a
massive and complex machine.

It appears that the machine is a transport that will allow one person to
travel to the aliens' home world.  Of course, the big question becomes
"Who gets to ride it?" (right after "Who's gonna pay for this thing?").

To boil it down, Ellie gets denied the seat in the machine because she
bluntly acknowledges her atheism, while Drumlin gets to go because he
rather insincerely professes his deep religious faith.

Drumlin is killed and the machine destroyed when religious fanatics bomb
the launch platform (apparently to keep "godless science" from talking
to god, or something like that).

Then Hadden reappears with startling news.  He has secretly constructed
a second machine off the coast of Japan and has reserved the ride for
Ellie, in whom he has taken a rather paternal interest.

Ellie boards the machine and is transported through some kind of
wormhole to a dream-like place that looks a lot like Waikiki Beach
before they built the hotels, where she meets the aliens who take the
form of her late father (David Morse).

When she returns home, no one believes her.  She was not even gone for
one second, they say, even though she remembers being gone for 18 hours.
Her story is officially discredited, although believed by a large
segment of the public (who don't even have to know that her computer
records of the trip contain nothing but static . . . eighteen hours
worth of static).

There is a lot to like about Contact so I will highlight those points
first.  Ellie Arroway is a well-rounded character portrayed by one of
the best actresses currently working.  Neither the character nor the
performance has the same depth as Clarice Starling in Silence of the
Lambs, but that's a tough standard to meet.

Ellie is interesting in that she is woman defined by a strange array of
father figures.  Her real father is an idealized movie Dad who does
nothing in the film but love his daughter unconditionally.  Drumlin
comes across as a distant stepfather to whom Ellie is like an irritating
teenager who wants to use his toys to get into trouble.  Hadden
obviously has affection for Ellie, but in the end he seems to see her as
his creation, nothing more than his favorite piece on the chess board.
Even Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), Ellie's love interest, takes a
paternalistic interest in Ellie, seeing her as a misguided person who
needs protection from her own impulses.

The film is technically impressive, especially in the scenes where the
message is first received and during the destruction of the first
machine.  The part of the film dealing with the message has the best
presentation of real science in a film since The Andromeda Strain.

The film falls apart when dealing with its central theme, the dichotomy
between science and religion.  This is a very real debate but Contact
boils it down to a simplistic level that never really touches on the
actual issues involved.

The film presents science pretty well (until the end) so the real
problem stems from it presentation of religious faith.  Religious people
are presented as shallow caricatures.  Rob Lowe plays a Ralph Reed clone
named Richard Rank (very subtle, guys), the voice of the religious
right.  Another religious figure is the fanatic who blows up the first
machine (Jake Busey).

The only really fleshed-out religious person, Palmer Joss, is supposed
to be a minister of some sort, but his actual faith is left pretty
vague.  I can't even say for certain that he was supposed to be a
Christian.  All we know is that he dropped out of the seminary and
obviously has no qualms about pre-marital sex.  

The film drops the science ball at the very end, when Ellie appears to
assert that there are some things even scientists must take on faith. 
In a day and age when the theory of evolution is denounced by the
religion right as an atheist "religious" doctrine, this is exactly the
wrong message to send.  In a movie dealing with issues of science and
faith, the last thing you want your scientist character to do is abandon
the principle of scientific skepticism.

What Ellie should have said was, "You shouldn't believe me.  Not without
evidence, and I don't have the evidence.  I know what happened but you
shouldn't take my word alone."  That is the voice of science speaking.

The character of David Drumlin is another problem with this film.  His
attitudes toward pure research project seem out of place for a person in
his position.  Also, his profession of "faith" before the selection
committee is so nakedly and transparently insincere that only a pack of
idiots should have fallen for it.

The last big problem is with the use of real personalities in various
roles.  The media figures, such as Bernard Shaw and Jay Leno aren't so
bad, in as much as their participation was voluntary.  The use of Bill
Clinton, however, should give anyone pause.  First of all, lifting the
image of a sitting head of state and inserting him into a fictional
story line, thus using his words outside of the context in which they
were spoken, is just plain creepy.  Also, using the real president
places this film between 1993 and 2001, forever dating it.  People
watching this film in the future will say, "Hey, this never took place
during Clinton's term."  This bit of unreality will jar people out of
their suspension of disbelief.  Also, the level of technology portrayed
in the film is too advanced to take place before the first decade of the
next century.  Better to have had a fictitious president played by an
actor or no president at all.

The film does raise an interesting question, although it never develops
it in a satisfying way.  

If we were picking an emissary to send to an alien culture, would an
atheist be automatically disqualified just because ninety percent of the
population of the world professes a belief in God, or at least some form
of supernatural creator?

Personally, I would hope not, since religion is basically an opinion, a
form of ideology.  I would not want any form of ideological test for
such an import task.

-- 
Paul McElligott
http://home.earthlink.net/~plmcelligott
"Subvert the dominant paradigm"