Subject: Review: Contact (1997)

From: "Kathy Glaser" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Jul 1997 15:37:36 GMT

What do you picture in your mind when you hear the words "movie" and
"aliens" together? With the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day you could be
forgiven for associating a movie about aliens with squid-like creatures
that terrorize our planet. But once in a while Hollywood manages to release
a thought-provoking film like Contact, which is about alien life, but which
doesn't have an "us-vs-ugly aliens" theme and isn't loaded with special
effects wizardry (though Contact does have some stunning scenes). 

Jodie Foster stars as Ellie Arroway, an astronomer who searches for
extra-terrestrial life by radio signal. She is a brilliant scientist who
turned down a teaching post at Harvard to pursue her obsession, convinced
that there is life out there. We are reminded three times in the film it
would be an awful waste of space if it was just us in the world. After the
funds for her project in Puerto Rico are cut off, she goes to do research
in New Mexico where she is financed by a super-rich recluse.  Ellie's
search for other-world existence is not in vain (of course, since a movie
about an astronomer just sitting in the desert with nothing happening would
be pointless). She hears signals in a code of prime numbers; these aliens
who have let their existence be known also send blue-prints for building a
machine that will take one earthling to meet them. After an initial
disappointment, Ellie becomes the chosen one. For anyone who has not yet
seen the film, it would be a spoiler to reveal the actual contact scene.
Suffice it to say that it's brief, somewhat unexpected (though reminiscent
of the last scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey), and it put a twist on the
debate between science and faith.

The conflict between science and religion is at the core of Contact.
Science and reason are personified by Ellie, who at an early age displayed
her rational mind. Her father died when she was nine years old, and when a
priest tried to comfort her by saying, in effect, that God's ways were
mysterious but it was all meant to be, she replied that if only they had
kept the medicine on the first floor she could have run to it faster and
saved her father. Fate had nothing to do with his death. On the other side,
advocating religion, is Palmer Joss (played by Matthew McConaughey), a
theologian who never became a priest (he apparently had trouble with the
celibacy thing). He and Ellie have a very brief affair in Puerto Rico, and
meet again later after the alien signals have been received. As a member of
the committee to decide the Earth emissary to the alien beings, he refuses
to vote for her. One reason is purely selfish; she would be risking her
life in the endeavor and he wanted her to be with him. The second reason is
because of her disbelief in a Supreme Being. He can't in good conscience
approve of an atheist being the first human to meet an alien species.

Contact shows the fear that many among the religious community have
regarding life on other planets. It's not the fear that aliens will attack
Earth, but rather that the Holy Book is wrong. After thousands of years of
believing that man is the center of the universe and created in God's
image, man would turn out to be just another species. To many people of
faith, the discovery of other beings would be psychologically devastating.
In Contact, Jake Busey plays the crazed leader of a religious cult who
sabotages the first transport machine. Though he is a cardboard character
(as is Richard Rank, the slick, self-righteous leader of a Christian
Coalition-type group, played by Rob Lowe) there is no doubt that if alien
life were discovered, it would drive many people to acts of desperation. 

Overall, Contact is a good, intelligent piece of storytelling, though at 2
1/2 hours it's longer than an average movie. There's some technical jargon
(which, Jodie Foster says, baffled even her), but it doesn't distract from
the story. The question of life on other planets is a fascinating one, and
beings from other planets actually making contact with us is a
mind-boggling prospect.

I couldn't help thinking, though, after I saw the movie, about the Calvin
and Hobbes cartoon, in which Calvin tells Hobbes how he had read that
countless species were being pushed toward extinction by man's destruction
of forests. And he adds, "Sometimes I think the surest sign that that
intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has
tried to contact us."